CHAPTER V. DISCIPLINE. IN view of the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a new fact, that nature is a discipline. This use of the world includes the preceding uses, as parts of itself. Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomo- tion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning is un- limited. They educate both the Understanding and the Reason. Every property of matter is a school for the understanding, -- its solidity or re- sistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its di- visibility. The understanding adds, divides, com- bines, measures, and finds nutriment and room for its activity in this worthy scene. Meantime, Rea- son transfers all these lessons into its own world of thought, by perceiving the analogy that marries Matter and Mind. 1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible ob- jects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and -316- |