To show my general meaning, and why I consider the claim an impossible one, let us imagine a little cell--one of the myriads which constitute the human body--professing in the same sort of way to stand outside the body and explain the laws of the other cells and the body at large. It is obvious that the little cell, swept along in the currents of the body and swayed by its emotions, in close proximity and contact with some portions of the organism, and far remote from others, cannot possibly pretend to any such impartial judgment. It is obvious not only that it would not have all the clues of the problem at its command, but that its own needs and experiences would prejudice it frightfully in the interpretation of such clues as it had. Yet man is such a little cell in the body of Nature, or, if you like, in the body of the Society of which he forms a part. There is, however, one way, it seems to me, in which a cell in the human body _might_ come to an adequate understanding of the body; and that would be rather through experience than through direct reasoning. It is conceivable that there might be some cell in the body which, through the nerves, etc., was in actual touch and sympathetic relationship with every other cell. Then it certainly would have the materials of the required solution. Every change in other parts of the body would register itself in this particular cell; and its little brain (if it had one), without exactly making any great effort, would reflect sympathetically the structure of the whole body--would become, in fact, a mirror of it. This will perhaps give you the key to my notion of what a true Science might be. But before proceeding to that, I want to go a little more in detail into the fallacy of the absolute intellectual view of Science. I say, first, that a complete summary of any object or process in Nature is impossible; secondly, that such summary as we do make is, and must inevitably and necessarily be, coloured by the underlying _feeling_ with which we approach that phase of Nature. To take the first point. You say, Why is a complete summary not possible? A watch or other machine may be completely described and defined; why should not (with a little more knowledge) a fir-tree, or the human eye, or the solar system, be completely described and defined?