in.] SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 195 



judgment on the fact are two distinct things, distinct 

 for the very simple reason that above the fact, and in- 

 dependent of it, there is a law promulgated by a legislator. 

 Here the laws are internal to the facts and relative to the 

 lines that have been followed in cutting the real intc 

 distinct facts. We cannot describe the outward appearance 

 of the object without prejudging its inner nature and its 

 organization. Form is no longer entirely isolable from 

 matter, and he who has begun by reserving to philos- 

 ophy questions of principle, and who has thereby tried 

 to put philosophy above the sciences, as a "court of cassa- 

 tion" is above the courts of assizes and of appeal, will 

 gradually come to make no more of philosophy than a 

 registration court, charged at most with wording more 

 precisely the sentences that are brought to it, pronounced 

 and irrevocable. 



Positive science is, in fact, a work of pure intellect. 

 Now, whether our conception of the intellect be accepted 

 or rejected, there is one point on which everybody will 

 agree with us, and that is that the intellect is at home in 

 the presence of unorganized matter. This matter it makes 

 use of more and more by mechanical inventions, and 

 mechanical inventions become the easier to it the more it 

 thinks matter as mechanism. The intellect bears within 

 itself, in the form of natural logic, a latent geometrism 

 that is set free in the measure and proportion that the 

 intellect penetrates into the inner nature of inert matter. 

 Intelligence is in tune with this matter, and that is why 

 the physics and metaphysics of inert matter are so near 

 each other. Now, when the intellect undertakes the 

 study of life, it necessarily treats the living like the inert, 

 applying the same forms to this new object, carrying 

 over into this new field the same habits that have succeeded 

 so well in the old ; and it is right to do so, for only on such 



