66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



founder of tbat Novum Organum or gospel of modern intellectual 

 regeneration. 



In bis classification of sciences, based upon tbeir increasing con- 

 creteness and speciality, be states tbat science, tbougb essentially one 

 in opposition to metaphysics and tbeology, ougbt to be divided into 

 branches, or sciences in a more restricted acceptation of the word, 

 each of them corresponding to a well-defined series, the number of 

 which he fixed at six, as follows : first, Mathematics ; second, As- 

 tronomy ; third, Physics ; fourth, Chemistry ; fifth, Biology ; and 

 sixth, Sociology. 



Without insisting upon the number of these divisions or their phil- 

 osophic value, I shall only consider the limits of sociology as they 

 have been traced by the master-hand of the French patriarch of that 

 strange mixture of knowledge and faith (" Catholicism minus Christ 

 and plus erudition," as it has been styled), which still holds sway over 

 so many minds under the name of the Positive Philosophy, and the 

 peculiarities of which are partly due to the depressed state of his 

 health at the time when he wrote his most important sociological 

 works, and partly, perhaps, to his native pedagogic whims. 



According to Comte, sociology ought to be a science, so to speak, 

 exclusively human. Social facts may be common in the life of ani- 

 mals, and even of plants, but he entreats the sociologists of his school 

 not to pay them any attention. "While other sciences are cultivated 

 for the sake of truth, Comte would have sociology to be learned only 

 for the sake of human morality. As to the methods of sociological 

 research, he admitted them in his first writings to be similar to the 

 strictly scientific methods of observation and induction, but he soon 

 retracted that admission, and declared that skeptical analysis ought 

 not to enter the sacred precincts, synthesis alone being worthy of such 

 elevated study. Thus he voluntarily created an abyss between science 

 and sociology. 



Referring to the limits and object of sociology, the statements of 

 the great founder of the French positive philosophy appear, in certain 

 respects, far more worthy of acceptance. Selecting, arbitrarily, the 

 human individual as the starting-point of his researches, he observes 

 that one part only of our activity is based upon egoistic instincts aris- 

 ing from need of nutrition or personal preservation in general ; tbat 

 part, including our uppermost psychological recesses, belongs to the 

 biological domain. Sociology includes the remainder — viz., that part 

 of human activity which is based not upon individual self-satisfaction, 

 but upon what he calls altruistic instincts, supposing them to be inher- 

 ent in every living being. The physiological roots of altruism he per- 

 ceives in the sexual attraction, the natural result of which is the asso- 

 ciation of a male and a female for the preservation of species — an end 

 not personal to either of them. 



A psychologist Mould observe, first, that Comte uses the word "in- 



