368 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



stops the perfect but rigid system of the machine. In the 

 same way, common sense makes use of its rough generalities 

 without disaster, but for elaboration and system there 

 must be accuracy in each part, to the last millionth of an 

 inch. 



It must be added that science goes more deeply than 

 common sense into the fact of connection itself. It does 

 not merely go beneath the practical efficiency of good 

 working rules to the strictly defined and conditioned 

 universal on which the rules rest. It goes beyond the 

 universal itself, seeking its why and wherefore by breaking 

 it up into elements and discovering further affinities. In 

 so doing, it tries to trace its way up to the central 

 point, what Aristotle called the essence of the subject, and 

 works from the centre outwards, drawing the radial lines so 

 as to preserve affinities and follow the lines of vital 

 distinction. The preparatory work of such a system is 

 that of classification, the final work, that of Explanation. 

 As the highest of the "systematic forms," Explanation 

 exhibits the fact explained not merely as dependent on 

 another fact, but as necessarily occupying its assigned place 

 in a system of connected facts. Whether it resolves 

 compound laws into their elements, traces derivative truths 

 to their origin, exhibits the character as a part as 

 dependent on its place in a structure, or deals with an 

 event or process as some special phase in the genesis of an 

 organic growth, the tendency of science seems always to 

 be to a systematisation of thought which shall not be 

 merely a connection of some one element with some other, 

 but rather the reference of all elements to a whole into the 

 plan of which they fit. 



3. The beginner in science has been sometimes re- 

 presented 1 as turning to a new method because of his 

 disgust with the contradictions to which he was brought 

 by following the unreflective, unanalysed workings of 

 common sense. However this may be, there must speedily 

 arise in science a tacit recognition of the divergence 

 between thought and truth, or between " truth " as it 

 appears to man, and Reality. At a certain stage of 

 1 E.g. by Plato, Rep. VII. 



