vm.] THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF POSITIVISM. 135 



derful gauge of his own value as a scientific critic does he afford, 

 by whom we are informed that phrenology is a great science, 

 and psychology a chimsera ; that Gall was one of the great men 

 of his age, and that Cuvier was &quot; brilliant but superficial &quot; ! l 

 How unlucky must one consider the bold speculator who, just 

 before the dawn of modern histology which is simply the appli 

 cation of the microscope to anatomy reproves what he calls 

 &quot; the abuse of microscopic investigations,&quot; and &quot; the exaggerated 

 credit &quot; attached to them ; who, when the morphological uni 

 formity of the tissues of the great majority of plants and animals 

 was on the eve of being demonstrated, treated with ridicule 

 those who attempt to refer all tissues to a &quot; tissu generateur,&quot; 

 formed by &quot;le chimerique et inintelligible assemblage d une 

 sorte de monades organiques, qui seraient des lors les vrais 

 elements primordiaux de tout corps vivant ; &quot; 2 and who finally 

 tells us, that all the objections against a linear arrangement of 

 the species of living beings are in their essence foolish, and that 

 the order of the animal series is &quot; necessarily linear,&quot; 3 when the 

 exact contrary is one of the best established and the most 

 important truths of zoology. Appeal to mathematicians, astro 

 nomers, physicists, 4 chemists, biologists, about the &quot; Philosophic 

 Positive,&quot; and they all, with one consent, begin to make pro 

 testations that, whatever M. Comte s other merits, he has shed 

 no light upon the philosophy of their particular studies. 



To be just, however, it must be admitted that even M. Comte s 

 most ardent disciples are content to be judiciously silent about 

 his knowledge or appreciation of the sciences themselves, and 

 prefer to base their master s claims to scientific authority upon 

 his &quot;law of the three states,&quot; and his &quot;classification of the 

 sciences.&quot; But here also, I must join issue with them as 



1 &quot; Le brillant mais superficiel Cuvier.&quot; Philosophic Positive, vi. p. 383 

 t &quot; Philosophic Positive,&quot; iii. p. 369. 3 Ibid. p. 387. 



4 Hear the late Dr. Whewell, who calls Donate &quot; a shallow pretender,&quot; so 

 far as all the modern sciences, except astronomy, are concerned, and tells us 

 that &quot; his pretensions to discoveries are, as Sir John Herschel has shown, 

 absurdly fallacious.&quot; &quot; Comte and Positivism.&quot; Macmillans Magazine, 

 March 1866. 



