specifically "inductive" in character) consists of methods of finding out just what qualities are unambiguous, economical, and dependable signs of those other things which cannot be got at as directly as can the sign-bearing elements. And if we started from the more obscure and complex difficulties of identification and diagnosis with which the sciences of physiology, botany, astronomy, chemistry, etc., deal, we should be forced to recognize that the identifications of everyday life--our "perceptions" of chairs, tables, trees, friends--differ only in presenting questions much easier of solution. In every case, it is a matter of fixing some given physical existence as a sign of some other existences not given in the same way as is that which serves as a sign. These words of Mill might well be made the motto of every logic: "To draw inferences has been said to be the great business of life. Everyone has daily, hourly, and momentary need of ascertaining facts which he has not directly observed.... It is the only occupation in which the mind never ceases to be engaged." Such being the case, the indispensable condition of doing the business well is the careful determination of the sign-force of specific things in experience. And this condition can never be fulfilled as long as a thing is presented to us, so to say, in bulk. The complex organizations which are the subject-matter of our direct activities and enjoyments are grossly unfit to serve as intellectual indications or evidence. Their testimony is almost worthless, they speak so many languages. In their complexity, they point equally in all directions; in their unity, they run in a groove and point to whatever is most customary. To break up the complexity, to resolve it into a number of independent variables each as irreducible as it is possible to make it, is the only way of getting secure pointers as to what is indicated by the occurrence of the situation in question. The "objects" of ordinary life, stones, plants, cats, rocks, moon, etc., are neither the data of science nor the objects at which science arrives.