62 
Blaisdell—The Methods of Science , 
ments , generalizations and classifications of science. In the 
real structure of the universe i which science makes her field 
there are no such things as genera or classes. Or rather there 
is no such communicant identity as to allow us to confound any 
one thing with any other thing, however in our apprehension 
of them they are indistinguishable. The lines in the splendid 
universe, which shut apart individual things and run through 
their structure to distinguish them, are sharp like the lines 
which circumscribe and diversify the most delicate engraving, 
never fall afoul of each other and leave no blur. One grain of 
sand on the sea shore is absolutely other than any other grain 
of sand on the sea shore. The solidity of one grain of sand on 
the sea shore is not the same solidity as the solidity of another 
grain. The gleam of the butterfly’s wing is not the gleam of 
the dawn. Apart do the individualities of substance and quality 
in things stand, separate one from the other, no two instances 
of quality the same, however alike, no two instances of sub¬ 
stance the same, however alike. Absolutely solitary are they, 
however the blood of one circulating purpose runs through 
them and makes them one glorious living moral and eternal 
whole. But there are groups and tiers of things in the climb¬ 
ing heights of this one, whose individuals are so indistinguish¬ 
able to our apprehension that to retain the conception of their 
separate individualities would only make chaos in our thought 
again, and the constitution of mind is such that we easily deal 
with them as having their being respectively in inclusive units. 
Accordingly out of them we make generalizations of qualities 
and classifications of things, tier over tier, like Dante’s rose of 
Paradise, flaming hierarchies ol science. But this is only man’s 
weakness. The Infinite Mind sees all things in their individual 
being as living in the one organic whole. The universe, in His 
•absolute self-consciousness, how resplendent! how absolutely in¬ 
conceivable in its grandeur, to our weak apprehension! Magnifi¬ 
cent is the achievement indeed of the great monarchs of scien¬ 
tific procedure in constructing the pregnant stages of ascending 
concepts by which man is enabling himself the better to hold 
the vast portrait he is making. It is only the service rendered 
by vast breadth of mind to ordinary human weakness, the staff 
