VIIL] THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF POSITIVISM. 147 



A third proposition in support of the Comtean classification of 

 the sciences stands as follows : 



&quot; En troisieme lieu cette classification presente la propriete tres-reniar- 

 quable de marquer exactement la perfection relative des differentes sciences, 

 laquelle consiste essentiellement dans le degr6 de precision des connais- 

 sances et dans leur co-ordination plus ou nioins intime.&quot; l 



I am quite unable to understand the distinction which M. 

 Comte endeavours to draw in this passage in spite of his 

 amplifications further on. Every science must consist of precise 

 knowledge, and that knowledge must be co-ordinated into 

 general proportions, or it is not science. When M. Comte, in 

 exemplification of the statement I have cited, says that &quot; les 

 phenomenes organiques ne comportent qu une etude a la fois 

 moins exacte et moins systematique que les phenomenes des 

 corps bruts,&quot; I am at a loss to comprehend what he means. If 

 I affirm that &quot; when a motor nerve is irritated, the muscle con 

 nected with it becomes simultaneously shorter and thicker, 

 without changing its volume,&quot; it appears to me that the state 

 ment is as precise or exact (and not merely as true) as that of 

 the physicist who should say, that &quot;when a piece of iron is 

 heated, it becomes simultaneously longer and thicker and in 

 creases in volume ; &quot; nor can I discover any difference, in point 

 of precision, between the statement of the morphological law 

 that &quot;animals which suckle their young have two occipital 

 condyles,&quot; and the enunciation of the physical law that &quot; water 

 subjected to electrolysis is replaced by an equal weight of the 

 gases, oxygen and hydrogen.&quot; As for anatomical or physiological 

 investigation being less &quot; systematic &quot; than that of the physicist 

 or chemist, the assertion is simply unaccountable. The methods 

 of physical science are everywhere the same in principle, and the 

 physiological investigator who was not &quot; systematic &quot; would, on 

 the whole, break down rather sooner than the inquirer into 

 simpler subjects. 



Thus M. Comte s classification of the sciences, under all its 



1 &quot; Philosophie Positive,&quot; i. p. 78. 



L 2 



