THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 509 



a very obscurely stated manner to guide the Positivist in 

 the subdivision of each special science. For the scala 

 intellecHis, as propounded by Comte, I have been able to 

 find in his " System " no more valid argument than is 

 contained in the following passage : — 



" The conception of the hierarchy of the sciences from this point 

 of view imphes, at the outset, the admission that the systematic study 

 of man is logically and scientifically subordinate to that of Humanity, 

 the latter alone unveiling to us the real laws of the intelligence and 

 activity. Paramount as the theory of our emotional nature, studied 

 in itself, must ultimately be, without this preliminary step it would 

 have no consistence. Morals thus objectively made dependent on 

 Sociology, the next step is easy and similar ; objectively Sociology 

 becomes dependent on Biology, as our cerebral existence evidently 

 rests on our purely bodily life. These two steps carry us on to the 

 conception of Chemistry as the normal basis of Biology, since we 

 allow that vitality depends on the general laws of the combination of 

 matter. Chemistry, again, in its turn, is objectively subordinate to 

 Physics, by virtue of the influence which the universal properties of 

 matter must always exercise on the specific qualities of the different 

 substances. Similarly Physics become subordinate to Astronomy 

 when we recognise the fact that the existence of our terrestrial 

 environment is carried on in perpetual subjection to the conditions of 

 our planet as one of the heavenly bodies. Lastly, Astronomy is 

 subordinated to Mathematics by virtue of the evident dependence of 

 the geometrical and mechanical phenomena of the heavens on the 

 universal laws of number, extension and motion." 



According to Comte, nothing can ever supersede the 

 need for the individual " to acquire successively, as the 

 race has acquired, the knowledge of each of the seven 

 phases which meet him in the relative conception of the 

 order of the world." It perhaps requires little critical 

 power to demolish a scheme so fanciful that mathematics 

 are related to physics through astronomy, and physics to 

 biology through chemistry ! ^ What remains, indeed, to 

 be said of a philosopher who gravely asserts that the 

 study of each science is to be limited by the requirements 

 of the one next above it, in order that we may reach as , 

 soon as possible the supreme science of morals, for, " if 



1 How much, too, of the real understanding of mathematical truths is 

 based on psychology, on a right appreciation of those modes of perception 

 which have geometrical conceptions for ideal limits ! (p. 179 et seq.). 



