Though that plan is and can be known only as revealed by God himself, yet when once known we may see analogies and proofs of it in all the Creator's works, and study with profit the several parts of the universe, and attain to real science of them; for then we can study them in their synthesis, or their relation to the whole. We may then have rational science, not built on revelation, but constructed by reason in the light of revelation. We do not make revelation the basis of the natural sciences. They are all constructed by reason, acting with its own power, but under the supervision, so to speak, of faith, which reveals to it the plan or purpose of creation, to which it must conform in its deductions and inductions, if they are to have any scientific value. If it operates in disregard of revelation, without the light radiating from the Creator's plan, reason can know objects only in their isolation, as separate and unrelated facts or phenomena, and therefore never know them, as they really are, or in their real significance; because nothing in the universe exists in a state of isolation, or by and for itself alone; but every thing that exists, exists and is significant only in its relation to the whole. It is a mistake, then, to assume that the church, the witness, guardian, and interpreter of the faith or revelation, has nothing to say to philosophy, or to the physical sciences, cosmogony, geology, physiology, history, or even political science. None of them are or can be true sciences, any further than they present the several classes of facts and phenomena of which they treat in their respective relations and subordination to the divine plan of creation, known only by the revelation committed to the church.