5IO THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



carried further, the cultivation of the intellect inevitably 

 becomes a mere idle amusement " ? It is clear that we 

 have in Comte's staircase of the intellect a purely fanciful 

 scheme, which, like the rest of his System of Positive 

 Polity, is worthless from the standpoint of modern science.^ 



S 4. — Spencer s Classification 



Historically, however, Comte is an interesting link 

 between Bacon and Spencer. For Comte deduces his 

 hierarchy from fifteen axiomatic statements which he 

 asserts realise the noble aspiration of Bacon for a 

 Philosophia Prima (p. 507), and which were clearly not 

 only suggested by Bacon's axioms, but surpass them in 

 want of scientific definition. On the other hand, it is 

 difficult not to admit that the writings of Comte have at 

 the very least acted as a stimulus — if only of the irritant 

 kind — to Spencer's thought." Much more importance must, 

 however, be attached to Spencer's than to Comte's scheme 

 for classifying the sciences, in particular because he 

 returns to Bacon's notion of the sciences as the branches 

 of a tree spreading out from a common root, and rejects 

 the staircase arrangement of the Positivist hierarchy. 

 The root of this tree is to be sought in phenomena, and 

 its trunk at once divides into two main branches, the one 

 corresponding to the sciences which deal solely with the 

 forms under which phenomena are knowrr to us, and the 

 other to the sciences which deal with the subject-matter 

 of phenomena. These divisions are respectively those of 

 the Abstract and the Concrete Sciences. The former 

 embraces Logic and Mathematics, or the sciences which 

 deal with the modes under which we perceive things ; the 

 latter deals with the groups of sense-impressions and the 



1 The reader who wishes to verify this conclusion may be referred to 

 Chapter III., " Definitive Systematisation of the Positive Doctrine," in vol. 

 iv. of the System of Positive Polity, translated by Congreve (London, 1877). 

 See for the hierarchy of the sciences, p. 160 et seq. Compare Huxley, 

 " The Scientific Aspects of Positivism," Lay Sermons, Addresses, and 

 Reviezvs (London, 1870), pp. 162-91. 



- See his " Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of AL Comte," 

 Essays, vol. iii. p. 58. 



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