684 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



possibility either of resorting to one rigid method of 

 thought or of appealing to any absolute Truth. His 

 belief in harmony and order does not preclude a great 

 diversity of methods and the recognition of the relativity 

 of all knowledge. Thus a large portion of his principal 

 work is devoted to an analysis of the different methods 

 which should govern the different sciences. He is more 

 liberal than many contemporary and later thinkers in 

 allowing for the different departments different methods 

 of research. 



Thus he assigns to the calculating methods the sciences 

 of astronomy and mechanics ; to the experimental 

 methods the science of physics ; to the formal methods 

 the science of chemistry ; and he especially opposes the 

 one-sided employment of these abstract methods in the 

 biological sciences : the latter have to recognise the 

 appearance of a new principle, the principle of life. 

 He regards this as consisting in what in more modern 

 terms would be called " adaptation to surrounding con- 

 ditions," and he adopts de Blainville's definition of 

 life as an uninterrupted process of composition and 

 decomposition. He also emphasises the comparative 

 method and the necessity of a rational classification. 

 As regards the real value of mathematics, Comte's 

 estimate seems to have been subject to uncertainty and 

 change, for in the third volume he extols the mathe- 

 matical as the type of the positive rational method; 

 whereas by the time he had reached the last volume, 

 having experienced the exclusiveness of contemporary 

 mathematicians, he opposes the extreme control which 

 the latter had usurped to themselves in France, and 



