748 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



scientific mind advances from the idea of Order or 

 arrangement to that of Unity through the idea of 

 Continuity. 



If, however, these highest conceptions had been intro- 

 duced to us by scientific thought in the form only 

 of limiting ideas or highest abstractions, it is doubt- 

 ful whether the special discussion of them would have 

 attracted so much attention or occupied so many 

 minds as has actually been the case. In many in- 

 stances we found it to be quite sufficient for the pur- 

 poses of science that fundamental principles should 

 be dogmatically asserted, and that their usefulness 

 should be the only proof of their correctness. If 

 no other interest attached to the conceptions of order 

 and unity than attaches, for instance, to the ultimate 

 principles of dynamics, to atomism, or to the axioms 

 of geometry, the number of persons who take up 

 these refined studies would probably be exceedingly 

 small. The reason why the conceptions of order, unity, 

 and individuality have received so much attention lies 

 in this, that they have not only a logical meaning as 

 instruments of thought, but also, as the words them- 

 4. selves indicate, a practical meaning, being bound up 

 interests with the highest ethical and sesthetical, as well as with 



attaching to 



d our soc i a l an( l religious, interests. The word order means 

 something more than arrangement when we speak of the 

 social or moral order ; the word unity is more than an 

 arithmetical conception when we speak of the unity of 

 action or of purpose, or the unity of design in art ; the 

 word individuality acquires a higher meaning in the 

 term personality. Those thinkers who in the nine- 



