32 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. \rr.v 



error consists in wrongly classifying, in the grouping bogethei 

 oi phenomena which are really distinct. When we say that 

 a child is ignorant that nitric acid will burn, we mean that, 

 he has never ranked together the like cases of a finger 

 immersed in nitric acid and a finger thrust against heated 

 metal. When we say that the ancients were in ignorance 

 concerning the force which keeps the planets in their orbits, 

 we mean that they did not know what that force is like — 

 that they had never grouped together the like cases of the 

 earth attracting the moon and the earth attracting an apple. 

 And when we say that they were in error in attributing the 

 moon's motion to the volition of a presiding goddess, we 

 mean that they grouped together the unlike cases of the 

 motion of a heavenly body through the sky and the motion 

 of a chariot driven by its charioteer along the ground. So 

 when we say that we do not fully understand the coronal 

 flames and other singular phenomena presented by the 

 eclipsed sun, we mean that we have not yet entirely suc- 

 ceeded in grouping them with other phenomena of which 

 we have heretofore had experience. And when we say that 

 we cannot now or at any future time know the Absolute, 

 we mean that there is not now and never can be, anything 

 given in cur experience with which we can classify it. 



Having thus, at the risk of tediousness, shown in detail 

 the essential identity of the processes involved in science 

 and in ordinary knowledge, let us go on to enumerate the 

 respects in which science differs from ordinary knowledge, 

 bearing in mind as we proceed that such distinctions can 

 only hold good to a certain extent. They are not differences 

 of kind, but differences of degree. 



In the first place we may say that science differs from 

 ordinary knowledge in its power of quantitative prevision — of 

 assigning beforehand the precise amount of effect which will 

 be produced by a given amount of cause. Mere prevision 

 is not, as is sometimes assumed, peculiar to science. We 



