rough 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.

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