The mind has not merely made a discovery of external fact; it has altered its own nature. It has become capable of rising above the present and the particular to the conception of law, of growth, of progress.

The true nature of things is in their particulars, not in generalities; we know the world through its infinite variations, not through abstract rules that pretend to govern them.

The mind does not work by starting from universal principles and deducing particular applications. It works the other way, by grasping the concrete particular and then working up to general ideas.