But conceptions cannot be communicated without being rendered objective. The ideal of the artist is locked up in his own mind, until on canvas, in marble, or by means of some other physical symbol, he communicates his high imaginings. Matter, then, according to the present constitution of things is the condition of intellectual communication. Law cannot be studied as abstract law; it can be studied only while acting, and that which exhibits this activity must be matter--something which will always and uniformly obey. There can be no conception of force except as acting, and the sole medium of such activity is matter. Thus again, matter is the condition of all communication from nature to man. Science is thus, in a measure, determined by the conditions of its discovery and communication. But we must distinguish between an invariable condition and that which is thus conditioned. Matter is not science; it is only the condition of its discovery and communication. Air is not hearing; it is the condition of hearing. We do not study matter for the sake of the matter when we study science, but for the sake of the law communicated to us in these changes of matter, and Law is a metaphysical, not a physical idea. Reason, not sense, apprehends it. Law is, so to speak, formulated in the physical, but it is not material. Matter is only the vehicle of science, as language is the vehicle of thought. It is plain, then, that just as in mathematics we have a division into pure and mixed, according as we deal with matter in the abstract or in the concrete, so we may in any science make a corresponding division, according as we confine our attention to the laws revealed by matter or to the matter revealing the laws: in other words; just as we give attention to the ideas of the message, or to the language in which it is communicated. The language must first be learned, but the words used to communicate the message may be separately understood, and yet the meaning of the message wholly missed. Knowing only the one makes a charlatan; knowing the other makes a savan. The sciences based upon this objective study of Nature are denominated Natural Sciences; and because they lisp the first syllables of Nature's message to man, they should be his primary teachers. It is by their aid that the universal message of God to man must be read. They form, as it were, a public highway leading from Nature to God. But the difficulty is that observing men become so absorbed in admiring some splendid piece of Divine engineering that they stop to gaze and wonder, until losing sight of everything above and beyond, they refuse to advance, fondly imagining that they have reached the end of the journey.