AND ITS SELF-COKSERVATION. 35 



" Do but remember that the ' nature ' in the study of 

 which you find such delight, and whose orderliness and 

 symmetry you have so superbly demonstrated, is by no 

 means all there in space is by no means objective merely 

 in the sense of being outer and foreign to mind ; but 

 rather that it is ' objective ' in the sense of being the 

 embodiment of consistency, of necessary truth,, and hence 

 as involving mind or reason as its very essence. Indeed, 

 with every advance in your investigation of nature, you 

 develop more and more conclusive proofs that nature is 

 an embodiment of ' laws ' that justify themselves to the 

 trained reason as possessing universal and necessary 

 validity. 



" Thus there is constantly increasing ground for confi- 

 dence in the justice of the maxim which virtually under- 

 lies all your work. And we may well go to nature and 

 trust to the guidance of its "facts" if we would find the 

 truth. At the same time, it is of the utmost importance 

 that we should know, as precisely as possible, both the 

 character and the extent of the significance which the 

 maxim contains. 



"And, on careful examination, this appears evident 

 enough. Thus the maxim implies that truth is in 

 Nature, and that the truth thus embodied is not beyond 

 the reach of thought. For it is, indeed, only through 

 thought that we can go to nature, or ' go ' anywhere in 

 search of truth. 



"If, indeed, nature were something wholly distinct 

 from thought, then the proposal to go to nature in order 

 to find the truth would imply that thought must abso- 

 lutely go beyond itself to find the truth. In which case 

 thought must itself appear to be something untrue. At 



