A man whose memory holds many facts may be called a man of much learning or knowledge, yet he may have little acquaintance with science. He be comes scientific when he groups his facts into classes according to their likenesses and seeks to explain them by inquiry into their relations as causes and effects.
Science is specially concerned with the so-called chain of cause and effect.
Emerson says, "We all have facts enough; what we need is the heat that dissolves the facts." 12. Three ways of getting knowledge.—Knowledge comes either from perceiving a phenomenon or from understanding it. A man who has seen many things happen, or who has read carefully some history of the United States, has acquired knowledge of the first sort if he has a retentive memory. If he has gone be yond the facts that he has seen and has discovered their causes, or has studied the forces which have shaped the development of the United States, he has that higher kind of knowledge which is called scientific. He is then a man not merely of knowledge but also of un derstanding.
To store the mind with a large lmowledge of facts and phenomena a man must evidently cultivate his powers of observation and memory. Both these fac ulties are exceedingly valuable. A man in whom they are weak is not likely to do clear thinking for the reason that he will never be certain about his facts, but it is easy to overestimate the importance of these faculties, for learning, that is, the mere knowledge of a large number of facts, or the ability to recall histori cal dates, produces a great impression, especially among the uneducated. A man of excellent memory seems to be very wise, yet he who devotes most of his energy to gathering and recording facts, neglecting to inquire into their scientific meaning, that is, not seek ing to understand them, is never really a wise man. If the facts or the information which he collects are arranged in such order that they can be utilized by others as-a basis for thinking, he is a servant of science and. is helping to. add to our real knowledge of things.
What I have just called real knowledge of things is 'knowledge of the higher sort, namely, understanding.
Sometimes this knowledge is called truth ; it is the object of all real thinking.
The mind arrives at truth in three different ways : First, thru intuition, a word derived from the Latin meaning "to see into"; second, by experience or, as the philosophers call it, 13-4'-y induction, from two Latin words meaning "lead into"; or third, by logical rea soning or deduction, a Latin word meaning "leading from." These three methods of acquiring a knowl edge of the truth, or an understanding of facts, are fully explained and illustrated in any ordinary treatise upon logic. Here I will undertake to give only a gen . eral idea of their nature. If a subscriber is specially interested, he can easily pursue the subject after he has finished the Institute's Course.
13. are certain truths which the human intellect perceives without effort. In mathe matics such truths are called axioms; in philosophy, in nate ideas. We know that two parallel lines can never meet ; that a straight line is the shortest distance be tween two points ; that the sum of the parts cannot ex ceed the whole, and so on. We know, too, that space is endless, that if we could fly thru the ether, we might travel for all time in any direction and never come to the boundaries of the universe. These truths, which the philosophers call "innate" or "inborn," are said to be got by intuition. The mind instantly perceives the truth of a mathematical axiom and carmot possibly conceive of its opposite being true. Mathematics, philosophy and metaphysics are entirely built upon trutbs obtained thru intuition.
' 14. Deduction or a priori you have studied geometry, you will easily understand the na ture of the process of reasoning called deduction, for this proeess is illustrated in the demonstration of every theorem. Deduction is a reasoning from the general to the particular. The stock illustration is: Man is mortal; John Smith is a man; therefore John Smith is mortal. Reasoning of this style is called a syllo gism, of which the first clause is the major premise, the second the minor premise, and the last the conclusion.