v.] VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES. 69 



I should be sorry to suggest that the speculators on scientific 

 classification have been misled by the accident of the name of 

 one leading branch of Biology Comparative, Anatomy ; but I 

 would ask whether comparison, and that classification which is 

 the result of comparison, are not the essence of every science 

 whatsoever ? How is it possible to discover a relation of cause 

 and effect of any kind without comparing a series of cases to 

 gether in which the supposed cause and effect occur singly, or 

 combined ? So far from comparison being in any way peculiar 

 to Biological science, it is, I think, the essence of every science. 



A speculative philosopher again tells us that the Biological 

 sciences are distinguished by being sciences of observation and 

 not of experiment ! l 



Of all the strange assertions into which speculation without 

 practical acquaintance with a subject may lead even an able 

 man, I think this is the very strangest. Physiology not an 

 experimental science ! Why, there is not a function of a single 

 organ in the body which has not been determined wholly and 

 solely by experiment. How did Harvey determine the nature of 

 the circulation, except by experiment ? How did Sir Charles 

 Bell determine the functions of the roots of the spinal nerves, 

 save by experiment ? How do we know the use of a nerve at 

 all, except by experiment ? Nay, how do you know even that 

 your eye is your seeing apparatus, unless you make the experi 

 ment of shutting it ; or that your ear is your hearing apparatus, 

 unless you close it up and thereby discover that you become 

 deaf? 



It would really be much more true to say that Physiology is 

 the experimental science par excellence of all sciences ; that in 



1 &quot; Proceeding to the second class of means, Experiment cannot but be 

 less and less decisive, in proportion to the complexity of the phenomena to be 

 explored; and therefore we saw this resource to be less effectual in chemistry 

 than in physics : and we now find that it is eminently useful in chemistry 

 in comparison with physiology. In fact, the nature of the phenomena seems 

 to offer almost insurmountable impediments to any extensive and prolific 

 application of such a procedure in biology.&quot; COMTE, vol i. p. 367. 



M. Conite, as his manner is, contradicts himself two pages further on, but 

 that will hardly relieve him from the responsibility of such a paragraph as 

 the above. 



