THE GENESIS OF SCIEN CE. 



inosculate ; they severally send off and receive connecting 

 growths ; and the intercommunion lias been ever becom 

 ing more frequent, more intricate, more widely ramified. 

 There lias all along been higher specialization, that there 

 might be a larger generalization ; and a deeper analysis, 

 that there might be a bettor synthesis. Each larger gen 

 eralization has lifted sundry specializations still higher ; and 

 each better synthesis has prepared the way for still deeper 

 analysis. 



And here we may fitly enter upon the task awhile since 

 indicated a sketch of the Genesis of Science, regarded as 

 a gradual outgrowth from common knowledge an exten 

 sion of the perceptions by the aid of the reason. We pro 

 pose to treat it as a psychological process historically dis 

 played ; tracing at the same time the advance from qualita 

 tive to quantitative prevision ; the progress from concrete 

 facts to abstract facts, and the application of such abstract, 

 facts to the analysis of new orders of concrete facts ; the 

 simultaneous advance in generalization and specialization; 

 the continually increasing subdivision and reunion of the 

 sciences ; and their constantly improving consensus. 



To trace out scientific evolution from its deepest roots 

 would, of course, involve a complete analysis of the mind. 

 For as science is a development of that common knowledge 

 Required by.the unaided senses and uncultured reason, so 

 is that common knowledge itself gradually built up out of 

 the simplest perceptions. We must, therefore, begin 

 somewhere abruptly ; and the most appropriate stage 

 to take for our point of departure will be the adult mind 

 of the savage. 



Commencing thus, without a proper preliminarv analy 

 sis, we arc naturally somewhat at a loss how to present, in 

 a satisfactory manner, those fundamental processes of 

 thought out of which gcicncc ultimatelv originates. Per- 



