144 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [vm. 



that which is visible to him ? Does he speculate upon the 

 possible movements of bodies which may attract one another in 

 the inverse proportion of the cube of their distances, say ? Does 

 biology, whether &quot; abstract &quot; or &quot; concrete,&quot; occupy itself with 

 any other form of life than those which exist, or have existed ? 

 And, if the abstract sciences embrace all conceivable cases of the 

 operation of the laws with which they are concerned, would not 

 they, necessarily, embrace the subjects of the concrete sciences, 

 which, inasmuch as they exist, must needs be conceivable ? In 

 fact, no such distinction as that which M. Comte draws is 

 tenable. The first stage of his classification breaks by its own 

 weight. 



But granting M. Comte his six abstract sciences, he proceeds 

 to arrange them according to what he calls their natural order 

 or hierarchy, their places in this hierarchy being determined by 

 the degree of generality and simplicity of the conceptions with 

 which they deal. Mathematics occupies the first, astronomy the 

 second, physics the third, chemistry the fourth, biology the fifth, 

 and sociology the sixth and last place in the series. M. Comte s 

 arguments in favour of this classification are first 



&quot;Sa conformity essentielle avec la co-ordination, en quelque sorte 

 spontanee, qui se trouve en effet implicitement admise par les savants livres 

 a 1 etude des diverses branches de la philosophic naturelle.&quot; 



But I absolutely deny the existence of this conformity. If 

 there is one thing clear about the progress of modern science, it 

 is the tendency to reduce all scientific problems, except those 

 which are purely mathematical, to questions of molecular 

 physics that is to say, to the attractions, repulsions, motions, 

 and co-ordination of the ultimate particles of matter. Social 

 phenomena are the result of the interaction of the components 

 of society, or men, with one another and the surrounding 

 universe. But, in the language of physical science, which, by 

 the nature of the case, is materialistic, the actions of men, so far 

 as they are recognizable by science, are the results of molecular 

 changes in the matter of which they are composed ; and, in the 

 long run, these must come into the hands of the physical. 



