CHAPTER V.

THE IDEA OF SCIENCE.

"I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts:

"First, The knowledge of things as they are in their own proper beings,-their constitution, properties, and operations.

"Secondly, The skill of right applying our own powers and actions for the attainment of things good and useful.

"Thirdly, The third branch may be called the doctrine of signs-the most useful whereof being words-it is aptly enough termed also logic."-Locke on the Human Understanding, B. iv. ch. 21.

SCIENCE may be generally defined as systematized knowledge. It is sometimes confounded with knowledge merely but there is a vast amount of knowledge which is no science; nay, which never can become such. For example, a piece of intelligence is received that a battle has been fought, or an earthquake occurred. This is knowledge; but it is neither science nor part of science. In one sense, and in another and a distant period of time, it may become a fact, which, with a number of similar facts, make up a general result in the philosophy of history. At the present, however, it is not and cannot be science. Science cannot be wholly disconnected from the ideas of system and reason. It is the former condition of knowledge. It implies, in the term itself, reason, deduction, method, conclusion, system. Science, therefore, is more properly the system which reason

has deduced from facts, than any arrangement of the facts themselves.

Science thus systematized naturally divides itself into three very distinct branches, having their basis, not only in what is called nature, but in that which is far higher and superior to nature in the order and method of creation.

In the Book of Genesis,* we have a record of the order of succession in the creation of the earth and its inhabitants. First, we have the creation of all things necessary to any thing which succeeded them. Hence we have the substance of the earth, the water, the light, the stars, the sun, the fruits, the animals— all in succession created before man, to whom they all were necessary. This was the creation of matter -the material world-constituting the visible abode of spirit. The laws of matter then make the first subject of science, and exist prior to and independent of man. Geometry is the science of form and the relations of form, derived from matter only. These laws began to exist with the creation of matter, and continue to exist independent of man. The principles of geometry existed, and the science would exist, perhaps in a dormant state, though man had never been created. This is obviously true of all the principles and laws which relate to the physical creation. Physical science, then, is the first and most distinct form of general science.

Genesis, chap. 1--The order of creation.

Continuing to trace from divine history the order of creation, we find that when the physical constitution of things was completed, then man was created, and there was breathed into him the breath of life. This life was not the same life as that given to the animals; but it was something which being breathed into man from God, gave him dominion over the earth, and made his spirit immortal.*

This was in regard to this earth-the metaphysical creation—the creation of a spirit, whose laws of action make a new subject of science. Hence we have metaphysical science, and that which is an application of metaphysics to the relation of things, such as logic.

Pursuing still the path of divine history, we find that when organized matter had been created, and life had been given to man, with dominion over all other things, that then there was given to him a manner of expression; a sign of ideas; a means of communication, and of stating and making known the relations of things abstracted from the things themselves this is language, grammar, philosophy. It is the doctrine of signs. Algebra is an example of it in the expression of physical science; and all literature is but a system of signs for the expression of thought.†

Thus we find the three great foundations of science

*Genesis, chap. 2, verse 7.-" And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

Genesis, chap. 2, verse 19.

traced out in the very order and succession of creation. Science is itself but a development of the laws of creation, so far as man has been able to discover and develop them. Creation is its cradle, and every new discovery but a new testimony to the order, beauty, and harmony which dwell forever in the works of God.

This deduction of science from the order and system of the universe, as exhibited to man, by the right use of reason, proves clearly for what end and purpose it is to be used in education. We have first the strengthening of reason by this exercise of its powers. Next we have the recognition of order and method, in the pursuit of any design, or object, as it is illustrated in all the works of creation. Next we have the knowledge of fixed, eternal truth, as the basis of all created things. Then we have demonstrated the superior power of the spirit, by its faculty of abstraction, in taking the principles or laws from the material objects and laying them before the mind in an independent condition. Finally, we find the higher power of creating a language of signs, which shall express their relations, and convey them from mind to mind, in a state of abstraction and independThus we have the science of physics, the science of metaphysics, and the science of a logic in language and signs, which expresses, explains, and connects, and communicates the laws deduced from the system of creation.*

ence.

*

The recent work of Professor Davies, on the "Logic of Mathematics," supplies a desideratum, which has long existed, in reference

The IDEA of SCIENCE, then, is, in its general and complete sense, the idea of the constitution; properties and laws of all created things, whether of matter or mind, as developed and expressed from the works of creation by the reason of man. There are three corollaries consequent upon this idea of science: 1st, That it is the best exercise to improve the reason to the highest point. 2dly, That as the works of God are found to be perfect, this development of them gives the most complete idea we can have of form, order, beauty, and harmony. 3dly, That as the works of creation are exhaustless, and the spirit of man immortal, science affords an exhaustless field for the investigations, the improvement, the strengthening, and enlargement of the human mind. For science is not, in this idea of it, limited to the science of matter, nor to the science of mind, nor to the discoveries of man, independent of Revelation. In one word, it is true science, and not science "falsely so called," that I have here defined. It is that law, of which Hooker said, "No less can be acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world."

to the connection of the physical and metaphysical sciences. That work is, so far as I know, original; and it will be found as useful as it is novel. The connections of the various branches of physical science, and of the whole with metaphysics and logic, constitute now an open field of inquiry.