Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 90

66

§ 38.

found is

[Div. II

to be indispensable in the subject, repeats itself in

the object. tion

SUBJECT AND OBJECT

The apparently

as a rule

accidental discovery or inven-

much more important

to atomistic

knowl-

But as long as something edge than scientific investigation. is merely discovered^ it is taken up into our knowledge but not into our science. Only when the inference and the subsequent insight that the parts of the object are organically related prove themselves correct, is that distinction born

between the special and the general which learns to recognize in the general the uniting factor of the special.

we

arrive at the

and

it

is

knowledge that there

by this entering into

this

is

In this

way

order in the object,

order and into this cos-

mical character of the object that science celebrates her

triumphs.

This is the more necessary because the subject of science not a given individual in a given period of time, but If this organic thinking man in the course of centuries. relation were wanting in the object, thinking man in one age and land would have an entirely different object before him than in a following century and in another country. The object would lack all constancy of character. It would not be the same object, even though in varying forms, but each time it would be another group of objects without Former connection with the formerly considered group. knowledge would stand in no relation to our own, and the conception of science as a connected and as an ever-selfdeveloping phenomenon in our human life would fall away. If to make science possible, the organic connection is indispensable between the parts of the object, as far as they have been observed in different countries and at different times, the same applies to the several parts of the object when they are classified according to the difference of their content. If the observation of the starry heavens, of minerals, of plants and animals, of man and everything that belongs in and to him, leads merely to the discovery of entirely different objects, which as in so many compartments are shut off from one another and stand outside of all relation to each other, a series of sciences is possible, but no is

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