The gratification simply of intellectual activity or curiosity must not be confounded with genuine research. Curiosity is the outcome of ignorance. Now, our ignorance of much in Nature is no reproach to anyone, but the way in which curiosity is gratified marks the difference between the simple child and the rational adult. In the childish development curiosity, though useful, is superficial and short-sighted; it is necessarily a shallow impulse, which cannot realize the wide relations of existence, and its satisfaction has no necessary connection with the acquisition of valuable knowledge. But the adult rises into a higher plane of thought. Curiosity is no longer unduly exercised, but has grown into a love of truth. It has become that reverential use of reason which is the basis of truth, and which forms the true guide to the attainment of scientific knowledge; for rational method does not isolate a fact from all its connections, but sees it in its relations and in due proportion. Thus only can valuable knowledge be acquired. Neither is analysis science. It is only when the observations of analysis are corrected and proved by synthesis that the truth of science can be obtained. A clear recognition of the different use of analysis and of synthesis is essential in any claim of research to be called scientific. ‘Although by analysis we separate and by synthesis we combine, yet in the synthesis there is more than in all the parts taken analytically. The mere synthesis introduces something entirely new.’ Kant, in speaking of the use of analysis and synthesis in logic, lays down the test of all scientific inquiry. He says: ‘Analysis is the first and chief requirement in making our knowledge distinct. For the more distinct our knowledge of a thing is, the stronger and more effective it can be; only the analysis must not go so far that at last the object itself disappears.’ Truth being a unity, the science which demonstrates it must correlate all knowledge. Science is not, therefore, an accumulation of isolated facts, or of facts torn from their natural relations. To know a thing scientifically is to know it in just relation to all other things. For science unites and demands the exercise of our various faculties as well as of our senses. Science is proved knowledge. It is the study of causes and their relations applied to facts; but such proof can only be obtained by search which is in accordance with the laws of Nature--laws which are gradually discovered by our race. Natural law is deduced from all the facts of human experience, in searching for and collecting which we must recognise the conditions under which we are placed, the limitations of the present phase of our intellectual powers, the gradual growth of conscience. Science being proved truth, scientific method requires that all the factors which concern the subject of research shall be duly considered, in order to arrive at correct thought respecting the special subject of inquiry.