viii.J T1IE SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF POSITIVISM. 155 



a great science, and psychology a chimaera ; that Gall 

 was one of the great men of his age, and that Guvier 

 was "brilliant but superficial"! 1 How unlucky must 

 one consider the bold speculator who, just before the 

 dawn of modern histology — which is simply the appli- 

 cation of the microscope to anatomy — reproves what he 

 calls " the abuse of microscopic investigations," and " the 

 exaggerated credit " attached to them; who, when the 

 morphological uniformity of the tissues of the great 

 majority of plants and animals was on the eve of being 

 demonstrated, treated with ridicule those who attempt 

 to refer all tissues to a "tissu genera tcur," formed by 

 "le chimerique et inintelligible assemblage dune sortc 

 de monades organiques, qui seraient des lors les vrais 

 elements primordiaux de tout corps vivant ; " 2 and who 

 finally tells us, that all the objections against a linear 

 arrangement of the species of living beings are in their 

 essence foolish, and that the order of the animal series is 

 " necessarily linear/' 3 when the exact contrary is one of 

 the best established and the most important truths of 

 zoology. Appeal to mathematicians, astronomers, physi- 

 cists, 4 chemists, biologists, about the " Philosophie Posi- 

 tive," and they all, with one consent, begin to make 

 protestation that, whatever M. Comte's other merits, he 

 has shed no light upon the philosophy of their particular 

 studies. 



To be just, however, it must be admitted that even 

 M. Comte's most ardent disciples are content to be 

 judiciously silent about his knowledge or appreciation of 



i " Le brielant mais superficial Cuvier." — Philosophie Positive, vi. p. 383. 



s "Philosophie Positive," iii. p. 3G9. 3 ibid. p. 3S7. 



Hear the late Dr. Whewell, who calls Comte "a shallow pretender," so 



4 as all the modern sciences, except astronomy, are concerned, and tells us 

 far " his pretensions to discoveries are, as Sir John Herschel has shown, 

 thatrdly fallacious." — "Comte and Positivism," Macmillan's Magazine^ 

 ahauli 1SG6. 

 Marc 



