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.
Thinking passes through all grades of complexity, from the first faint dawnings
in the mind of the babe when it sees the relation between the mother and its
feeding, on to the mighty grasp of the sage who is able to "think God's thoughts
after Him." But it all comes to the same end finally—the bringing to light of new
meanings through the discovery of new relations. And whatever does this is