MEANING DEPENDS ON RELATIONS.--To have a rational meaning for us, things must always be defined in terms of other things, or in terms of their uses. _Fuel_ is that which feeds _fire_. _Food_ is what is eaten for _nourishment_. A _locomotive_ is a machine for _drawing a train_. _Books_ are to _read_, _pianos_ to _play_, _balls_ to _throw_, _schools_ to _instruct_, _friends_ to _enjoy_, and so on through the whole list of objects which we know or can define. Everything depends for its meaning on its relation to other things; and the more of these relations we can discover, the more fully do we see the meaning. Thus balls may have other uses than to throw, schools other functions than to instruct, and friends mean much more to us than mere enjoyment. And just in the degree in which we have realized these different relations, have we defined the object, or, in other words, have we seen its meaning. THE FUNCTION OF THINKING IS TO DISCOVER RELATIONS.--Now it is by _thinking_ that these relations are discovered. This is the function of thinking. Thinking takes the various separate items of our experience and discovers to us the relations existing among them, and builds them together into a unified, related, and usable body of knowledge, threading each little bit on the string of relationship which runs through the whole. It was, no doubt, this thought which Tennyson had in mind when he wrote: Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower--but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. Starting in with even so simple a thing as a little flower, if he could discover all the relations which every part bears to every other part and to all other things besides, he would finally reach the meaning of God and man. For each separate thing, be it large or small, forms a link in an unbroken chain of relationships which binds the universe into an ordered whole. NEAR AND REMOTE RELATIONS.--The relations discovered through our thinking may be very close and simple ones, as when a child sees the relation between his bottle and his dinner; or they may be very remote ones, as when Newton saw the relation between the falling of an apple and the motion of the planets in their orbits. But whether simple or remote, the seeing of the relationships is in both cases alike thinking; for thinking is nothing, in its last analysis, but the discovering of the relationships which exist between the various objects in our mental stream.