5o8 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



we turn more closely to his analysis of History and 

 Sociology, we feel that Bacon's classification has hardly 

 been without influence on the scheme of the modern 

 Spencer. Indeed, one essentially Baconian idea has been 

 adopted by Spencer. This idea will be found in the 

 Advancement of Learning, bk. iii. chap. i. " The divisions 

 of knowledge," Bacon writes, " are not like several lines 

 that meet in one angle, but are rather like branches of a 

 tree that meet in one stem." This idea, common to 

 Bacon and Spencer, that the sciences spring from one 

 root, is opposed to the view of Comte, who arranges the 

 sciences in a series or staircase. 



^ 3. — Comte' s " Hierarchy " 



Now in some respects science owes a debt of gratitude 

 to Comte, not indeed for his scientific work, nor for his 

 classification of the sciences, but because he taught that 

 the basis of all knowledge is experience and succeeded in 

 impressing this truth on a certain number of people not 

 yet imbued with the scientific spirit, and possibly other- 

 wise inaccessible to it. The truth was not a new one — 

 Bacon had recalled it to men's minds with greater power 

 than Comte ever did ; it had been essentially the creed 

 of the scientists who preceded and followed Comte, and 

 of whom the majority never probably opened his writings. 

 Yet because Comte repudiated all metaphysical hypotheses 

 as no contributions to knowledge, and taught that the 

 sole road to truth was through science, he was in so far 

 working for the cause of human progress, and his services 

 are not necessarily cancelled by the peculiar religious 

 doctrines which he propounded at a later period of his 

 life. 



According to Comte there are six fundamental sciences : 

 Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, 

 Sociology, culminating in the seventh or final science of 

 Morals. In the supreme science of morals lies the 

 " synthetical terminus of the whole scientific construction." 

 The hierarchy of the sciences thus postulated sufifices in 



