8o THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS 



stateliness of its single, immutable order. It seems that 

 knowledge can deepen endlessly downwards in its analysis 

 of any minutest object, and that, so far from exhausting its 

 content, it ever finds itself in the presence of that which 

 has significance and which is therefore not purely simple ; 

 and yet, in doing so, it is only revealing a more concrete 

 One, bringing to clearer light the uniformity of law, the 

 concrete identity of principles which connect every atom 

 with all being, and maintain for them their own place and 

 significance within a cosmos that is the expression of " one 

 law, one element." 



Ordinarily, it is assumed that while science must 

 discover its universals, the particulars are presented to it 

 for its passive acceptance. They are said to be "given." 

 I wish to point out that the order of nature is not more 

 the discovery or product of human thought than is its 

 variety. The world for the ancients, as compared with our 

 own, was as shallow in content and barren of differences 

 as it was insecure in its order and unity, and subject to the 

 caprice of the gods. The enterprise of knowledge has had 

 a double aspect. Man's thought has not only proved the 

 affinity of the world with the subject, and its dependence 

 thereon for all its meaning ; it has also, and by the same 

 act, distinguished objects from each other and from the 

 self, recognised it more and more fully as a system of 

 elements interlocked in an order which gives the law to the 

 investigating mind. In possessing the world, knowledge 

 has been engaged in establishing the world in its own 

 rights. With every advance the objects which thought 

 discovers limit its caprice, rebuke its wilfulness, oust its 

 prejudices, dictate its modes of inquiry, expel the irrespon- 

 sible imagination, demand the complete submission of reason. 



