for the compounds he finds in his retort; he seeks after the truth which these compounds formulate. Metaphysics and Physics evidently agree in this; that both are seeking to frame an articulate utterance of the Idea given in the diverse manifestations of Force—the Idea which includes all Potencies, the summing up of all phenomena into that final generalization which includes the intellectual as well as the material, until at last we reach the essential unity of all Truth.

Science, then, is classification, or the discovery of the principles of classification, rather than an arbitrary acquaintance with things classified. Every science, however, must have an objective expression—that is, must be formulated. In this, both metaphysical and physical science agree; the only difference in this respect is, that in Physics, Nature gives us in the first place the material interpretation of the idea—that is, the basis of classification—which we have only to translate into idea: while in metaphysics, we first have the idea to which we must furnish the objective utterance. We see here the precise difference between what is called the logical and the natural method—the one being usually called the reverse of the other. The difference is not so much a difference in intellectual procedure as in objective expression. For instance: The botanist has before him the whole range of vegetable forms. He notes resemblances and differences, and groups plants into species and genera, but his work is not ended when these are named and known, and their qualities discovered. He is seeking amidst these multifarious forms for the law of vegetable growth and reproduction. Every organ of the plant is the symbol of an idea, and these ideas form the science of Botany. These Ideas are metaphysical—that is intellectual, and only their sensible manifestation is physical. The symbols of these Ideas, being given in Nature, must be learned from observation before they can be used intelligently, just as words must be learned before one can speak a language. Mastery of the means of expression is as essential to the communication of ideas an is the possession of the ideas themselves. The botanist observes an individual plant, and notes its characteristics. He observes others which possess some of these characteristics whilst others are wanting. He forms a class-type from these agreeing attributes, and gives this new collocation of characteristics a name. Nature never presents this class-type absolutely; it is found nowhere but in intellect. What has the botanist done but to retranslate the communication of Nature into Idea, and then to express this idea by less complicated and less physical symbols? Man's province in this case is simply to interpret the hieroglyphics of Nature into a more readily comprehended language—to express that simply which nature has expressed confusedly. The scientist restricts himself to the interpretation of a single class of symbols, as the Botanist to plants, the Zoologist to animals, but the end sought in each case is the same—that is, to change all these physical utterances of Nature into Idea, and to secure for this Idea a method of expression involving the least possible materiality of symbol—that is, to change individual facts and phenomena into general principles, which, because abstract, are unchangeable. When this has been done, the work of the Naturalist ceases, but the work of Man, the Thinker is not done; it is only just begun. By assuming the ultimate expressions of the various natural sciences as individual and not as typical, we can treat the truths reached by them precisely as the Botanist treated plants, and, rejecting points of of difference, may find in them all some central idea. This is the province of the metaphysician. He seeks the law of Idea, he determines the law of Thinking, just as all other laws are determined, from a study of the symbols formulating its expression in Nature. When this law has been distinctly enunciated, and freed from all intermixture with the contingent, then the work of the metaphysician ceases, the summum genus has been reached. The truths communicated in the symbols of Nature, have been correlated and enunciated, and finally translated from the dialect of man the physical into the language of man the intellectual. Physical science determines the separate words of this message of God, the letters of which are scattered throughout Nature. Metaphysics combines these words into propositions which enunciate a distinct truth. There is therefore neither conflict nor variation between the method of Logic and the method of Nature. The movement of both is in the same direction; the only difference is in the point of starting. And another truth no less important, which follows from the foregoing discussion, is that the method of Nature is fundamental to the method of Logic. Physics should precede metaphysics, but not exclude it; both are essential to every true science, and physics, which stops with physics, leads man by dazzling promises into some Utopian desert only to leave him there to die of hunger. And it is no less true that metaphysics, without this basis in experimental science, is illusory and untrustworthy, wherever the original data are necessarily empirical.

Two conditions are thus necessary to all science: a body of knowable truth capable of being systematized; and an intelligence capable of apprehending and systematizing it. One of these conditions is physical and one is metaphysical; and all true science must be the resultant of Law and Idea, the Objective and the Subjective, the twin forces of Nature and Man. If either of these conditions be wanting, there can be no true science, for science can neither be "evolved from the depths of the personal consciousness," nor can the scattered letters of scientific truth, as given in nature, arrange themselves into the words of a significant message. Knowledge must be classified before it is science, and that which classifies can only be intellect—discovering and enunciating this classification according to the laws of mental action. As prominence is given to one or other of these two conditions we have the division into Logical and Natural, but the fundamental principle of classification is the same in both—it being simply the law of intellectual action—just as the law which governs the action of the levers of a loom will determine the pattern of the woven fabric. There can, therefore, be no conflict between the methods of Logic and those of Nature. The determining element in all classification, whether of the phenomena of Mind or of the grosser phenomena of Matter is uniformly and always the same—the law of intellectual action.

Science then resolves itself into a determination of this Law of mental activity, so that in an ultimate analysis, all science is metaphysical, just as all science primarily is physical. Here, as elsewhere, Law can be studied only in its objective manifestations. The Law of Thinking can be educed only from expressed Thought, but the Law is not objective thought, any more than the idea of the sculptor is marble, or the conception of the painter is paint. The simplest expression of thought is not the syllogism but the logical proposition. Now, it is plain that if the proposition is the formulation—the material representative of thought—if we study it as we study other natural symbols, we will find in it the fundamental Law of Thinking, and ultimately the fundamental Law of all Science: just as, if it were possible to reduce all elementary substances to one, the chemist would be able to find in that one a condensed expression of chemical science.

What then is a proposition? Simply stated, it is the assertion of relation between two terms; or more abstractly, it is the reference of an individual to its species—the assertion of a