OF SOCIETY. 491 



in the progress of biological and philosophical thought 

 since the time of Comte. The superior definiteness 

 of conception also in the sciences capable of mathe- 

 matical analysis is clearly pointed out by Comte, 

 though he suggestively refuses to identify definiteness 

 with certainty of knowledge : a difference which has 

 since been more clearly brought out. 



Further, in dwelling upon the necessity of getting 

 hold of the natural co-ordination of biological as well 

 as political phenomena through observation rather than 

 by submitting them to mathematical analysis, he has 

 anticipated the more recent reaction against the purely 

 atomising tendency of thought. To this, which reigned 

 supreme, notably in French science, under the influence 

 of the school of Laplace, he opposes, or rather adds, the 

 esprit d'ensemble as indicative of the right line of reason- 

 ing in the biological and social sciences. Laplace, as 

 before him Condorcet, fancied he had found in the 

 calculus of probabilities a valuable instrument for deal- 

 ing, inter alia, with social phenomena. Whilst he con- 

 demns this we must note that Comte adopts and 

 perpetuates Montesquieu's identification of the laws of 

 nature with those of society, and that he commends 

 Condorcet for his attempt to foretell the march of civil- 

 isation and give a picture of the future, and this in 

 spite of his contention that it is impossible to give a 

 definition of goodness. 



Thinkers who belong to a different school consider 

 that incalculable harm has been done by obliterating 

 the essential difference that exists between natural laws 

 as mere statements of existing actual regularities, and 



