Stephen H. Carpenter

“ To claim that analysis represents the complete normal action of the intellect in reasoning, is ultimately to claim that the initial point of thinking is the summum genus of thought—God. Now God is undoubtedly the initial point of absolute thought, but he is not the beginning of human thought. Intellectually speaking, God is the final generalization; every movement possible to him must be one of analysis—a differentiation of Himself, so to speak, by negatives. ”

“ A man may know a book and know nothing more; he knows the science only when he is capable of making the book for himself. Mere knowledge thus differs from science in that the one is held only by the apprehensive powers of the mind, while the other passes beyond these into the reflective or ratiocinative. Pure science, then, must be wholly abstract. The forms and substances of Nature with which the scientific student deals, are only the discrete figures of the young mathematician, to be thrown aside with advancing knowledge. ”

“ Every form of matter is a symbol of thought, and challenges interpretation. Every change in form corresponds to an antecedent change in idea, and must be intended to reveal it. As thought, then, begins its evolution with the general and proceeds to the individual by a series of terms each of which is similarly related to both extremes, we must find the material enunciation of this process assuming the form of a series of terms, beginning with mere nebulous matter, grading into organic life, and organic life presenting us with a similar series beginning with the mere cell and ending with man. ”

“ Like men on a journey we leave the train when we have reached our journey's end, but the train passes on out of sight in the distance, sending back, now and then, tokens of its progress, as it thunders over a bridge, or whistles shrill as it nears some further stopping place, until at last all is still, not because the train has stopped, but because we can follow it no further with our senses. ”

“ The artist's mind may be filled with splendid conceptions, but no one but he can look within his consciousness and see them. Before others can have any knowledge of his thoughts, he must give them form, or embody them in statues or paintings. The soul of the musician may be thrilled by the harmonies that his imagination creates, but no other soul can join him in this ecstasy until he has given form to his conceptions. ”

“ Even after science has reached the utmost limit possible to it, it is not satisfied to rest there, but starts at once upon its return trip, to bring to notice undiscovered facts hidden in these mighty generalizations. Thus the pendulum of intellectual activity unceasingly vibrates between the infinite and the finite, never resting, because Idea and Matter, the force of Man and the force of Nature can never be completely identified. ”

“ But this summum genus must be predicable of this whole. Matter and mind may thus be reduced to a single category, and the physical and the intellectual finally coalesce in this last generalization. Materialism and idealism thus differ merely in the degree of generalization reached—or rather they both agree in avoiding the final generalization which identifies both matter and mind. Materialism must always deal with the individual, for matter can appear under no other form. Idealism must always rest upon the general, for thought, to be thought, must state a generalization. ”

“ All knowledge is essentially one. The object-matter upon which intellect exerts itself, does not affect the subjective act of knowing. Physics, when stripped of that which is merely contingent, becomes metaphysics. Physical science deals with object-matter, and discusses the signs by which nature communicates her message—that is, phenomena. Metaphysical science has to do with the subject-mind, and discusses the meaning of the message. ”

“ Here, as uniformly in Nature, the whole absolutely precedes the part—the universal exists before the particular—God before man. Truth absolute thus exists before truth conditioned. Science before Art. Remove conditions and the conditioned becomes the absolute; art and science coincide. ”

“ If we give prominence to the individual notion, we consider the proposition in extension; if we turn our attention to the specific notion we consider the proposition in intention: in the one case referring to the individuals composing the class, in the other to the attributes composing the class-type. The first corresponds to induction, the second to deduction. When we study individuals we study physics; when we study the attributes composing the class-type, we study metaphysics. The Law of Thinking as educed from a study of the proposition is the law of classification. ”

“ The aim of physical science is to determine that half of the intellectual orbit which lies between the individual and the general—the aim of metaphysical science is to trace the other half which lies between the general and the individual. When we seek to know what is, we proceed by induction—the method of the phenomenal. When, knowing what is, we proceed to determine what hence must be, we proceed by deduction—the method of the Necessary. Thus Science, at first seeking principles, proceeds by induction to establish them ”

“ Admitting then to its fullest extent the fact that, judged from a purely physical point of view, all organic forms seem to have been derived each from its immediate predecessor, by a mere functional impulse; and admitting that science is possible upon no other condition; we claim that these material forms are brought into such relation by intellectual evolution, and not by physical genesis; they represent an evolution of Thought and not an evolution of Matter. We know from consciousness that this process of evolution is the method of our thinking. ”

“ Evolution, then, cannot proceed from any innate organic impulse, unless the force that tends to exact reproduction, and the force that induces a change be equally and separately cognizable. Change must proceed according to some law which accounts for the change, and distinguishes between the normal exertion of power and that exertion which causes a deviation. Science, to be science, must explain apparent exceptions as fully as the regular operation of forces, and that which causes the irregularity must be as distinctly cognizably by itself as the force which acts regularly. ”

“ We must not confound a condition with a Law—the one is a conception antecedent to all action, a genus to which the particular activity may be referred; the other is coincident with action. The one is the medium of the other. We may illustrate this idea by science itself, which is reached only by an analysis of Art. Matter is the condition of the expression of an idea; hence to all but the artist, Art must precede Science, but this cannot be in the case of the artist ”

“ As logic furnishes no criterion by which to test the absolute truth of propositions, but deals wholly with conclusions drawn from given premises, so science furnishes no data by which to determine the absolute genesis of force, but restricts its enquiries to the phenomena resulting from a force given. For the student of physical science cause and effect is only the transference of a given and determined force from one material form to another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Supreme Intelligence, being the final generalization, must possess all knowledge, and the only intelligent action possible to him from our point of view, is from this absolute generalization towards the concrete and individual. The absolute general is purely subjective, which, to become cognizable, must be rendered objective. This can be secured to us only through the intervention of material forms. From this point of view, matter is only the symbol of thought—thought apart from the thinker. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We might as well call Painting the science of pictures, or Sculpture the science of statues. So Language, the medium of thought, is only a symbol, less material indeed than pictures and statues, but still physical. What we want in "The Science of Thinking" is not the knowledge of symbols, but the knowledge of that which is symbolized. The chemist does not care for the compounds he finds in his retort; he seeks after the truth which these compounds formulate. Metaphysics and Physics evidently agree in this ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 8] of the painter is paint. The simplest expression of thought is not the syllogism but the logical proposition. ”

“ Now, if physical science does not deal with the origin of the initial force, but assumes at the outset its presence, no more does it fall within its province to examine into the origin of the increments which give to physical forms that variety which [Pg 30] renders science possible. Science deals with results, not antecedents; and after having determined results, it is not authorized to affirm that one species has produced another by evolution, or has produced it at all. ”

“ As the logician must assume his premises, and, as a logician, cannot question their truth, so the physicist must assume a force in operation, and, as a physicist, cannot examine its genesis. The physical or the metaphysical method of inquiry is valid only so long as restricted to physical or metaphysical processes: a mixture of the two methods will give results satisfactory neither to science nor to philosophy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A species differs from the genus by the addition of at least one attribute. Now, if the species is distinguishable from the genus, the attribute which differentiates it, must be separately cognizable—so also the individual differs from the species by the addition of attributes, which must in like manner be separately cognizable, or the species will never be conceived independently of the individuals. A thought cannot proceed by insensible steps, nor can its material expression vary otherwise than by determinate and distinguishable differences. ”

“ Matter is the formal expression of thought, or the necessary condition of such expression, and in this condition is found the link that connects the subjective and objective manifestations of being. Subjectivity is ideality, as objectivity is materiality. The consciousness can take cognizance only of what is within itself, and therefore without every other. Consciousness is therefore wholly personal. To communicate an idea it must be placed within the consciousness of another. ”

“ Objectively considered, science is classified knowledge; subjectively viewed, it is the laws or principles according to which knowledge is classified. Every actor implies an act—every [Pg 2] thinker a thought. We may therefore universally make this dual classification, according as we view the mental operation involved, or the attributes of objects which form the subject of thought. The possibility of science is conditioned upon the possibility of classification. Mere knowledge is not science, as the world ought to have learned by costly experience. Even classified knowledge may not be science ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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, [Pg 5] 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. ”

“ When possessed of knowledge, we wish to discover its applications, when knowing the law, we wish to determine the phenomena necessarily resulting therefrom, we proceed by deduction—from the general to the individual. ”