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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



*ng less than " the culmination of philoso- 

 phy in its intimate and precise alliance with 

 all the special sciences, and with every phase 

 and form of human life, individual and col- 

 lective." 



No doubt the reason thus given why this 

 philosophy has made its way so slowly has 

 truth in it, as large and extensively ramified 

 and complex conceptions can not be grasped 

 and mastered except through corresponding 

 effort. But there is probably another rea- 

 son which has also been operative in hinder- 

 ing the study of " Universology." Mr. An- 

 drews is an erudite philologist and a man 

 of great mental independence. As a con- 

 sequence he uses his vast lingual resources 

 with a freedom that borders upon license. 

 Rules are lightly regarded he makes his 

 own rules; and, being an irrepressible in- 

 ventor, he coins new words as easily as he 

 breathes. These qualities are of course 

 necessary to the constructor of a new and 

 universal language ; but the practical effect 

 has been that even his English expositions 

 of universological doctrine have been so in- 

 laid and overlaid with new, technical, and, 

 according to accepted standards, outlandish 

 terms, that they have frightened off readers 

 and been a powerful hindrance to the stu- 

 dents of his system. A universal science 

 and a universal language, coming all at 

 once and from the same party, have favored 

 both discouragement in their acquisition 

 and a grave suspicion as to the genuine 

 quality of so vast an xmdertaking. And 

 this doubt has been unquestionably much 

 re-enforeed by the general acceptance in 

 recent years of evolutionary ideas, which 

 imply slow growth through long periods, by 

 small increments of change, in the mental 

 as well as in the material world. These 

 considerations, even if indecisive and ille- 

 gitimate, may help to explain the reluctance, 

 if not the prejudice, with which Mr. An- 

 drews's system has been received. 



But, aside from the enormous friction of 

 the lingual medium employed, a system of 

 universal science is at best hard to repro- 

 duce in a newspaper article. Mr. Andrews's 

 radical idea is that of similarity or parallel- 

 ism of method or of analogy among the 

 sciences. He maintains that this is their 

 most fundamental relation, and that it 

 forms itself a distinctive and all-compre- 



hensive science. The analogy of individual 

 life to the collective life of society, pro- 

 pounded by Plato, expounded by Hobbes, 

 and worked up into the modern doctrine of 

 " the social organism," may be taken as an 

 example of analogy among the sciences. 

 But in this case all the phenomena are of 

 a common kind, and fall within the single 

 category of biological science. An example 

 of remoter analogy is furnished where we 

 compare organic with inorganic sciences. 

 In his celebrated discourse on geological 

 reform, given in his " Lay Sermons," Pro- 

 fessor Huxley develops this idea very clear- 

 ly in tracing out the analogy between our 

 knowledge of the living creature, biological 

 knowledge, and our knowledge of the con- 

 stitution of the globe, or earth-knowledge, 

 as he terms it. He brings both these phe- 

 nomenal spheres under the large concep- 

 tion of " Evolutionism," and points out 

 the structural, functional, and development- 

 al similarities that are traceable between 

 them. Assuming the validity of this idea, 

 Mr. Andrews proceeds to carry it out sys- 

 tematically, and to bring all departments 

 of knowledge into unity on the analogical 

 basis. His work is done with great learn- 

 ing and great ingenuity. He has served a 

 long apprenticeship at finding analogies, and 

 he sees them everywhere. Not only are the 

 sciences as now advanced correlated by in- 

 numerable traces of cousinship, but all the 

 past stages of science are filiated by the 

 same ties his net brings in everything. 

 Not only physics, chemistry, biology, mathe- 

 matics, astronomy, geology, but metaphysics, 

 ontology, philology, archaeology, history, and 

 all the stages of inquiry are enmeshed in a 

 grand analogical unity. The old doctrine 

 of fire, air, earth, and water, though now to 

 the scientific mind only representing a crude 

 stage of thought, altogether erroneous but 

 useful in an age of ignorance, is installed in 

 Mr. Andrews's exposition, as may also be 

 the total product of the mind of man in all 

 the stages of its growing intelligence. 



The real question, of course, is as to the 

 value of this immense work, and to what 

 extent it has been pushed into the sphere 

 of mere fancy. To what degree is it legiti- 

 mate science ? It is not to be denied that 

 the history of scientific ideas is full of the 

 examples of futile effort in tracing out fan- 



