DIFFICULTIES IN TREATING THE SUBJECT. 191 



are conscious of having done the subject but scant justice. 

 Two difficulties have stood in our way : one, the having to 

 touch on so many points in sucti small space ; the other^ 

 the necessity of treating in serial arrangement a process 

 which is not serial — a difficulty which must ever attend all 

 attempts to delineate processes of development, whatever 

 their special nature. Add to which, that to present in any- 

 thing like completeness and proportion, even the outlines 

 of so vast and complex a history, demands years of study. 

 Nevertheless, we believe that the evidence which has been 

 assigned suffices to substantiate the leading propositions 

 with which we set out. Inquiry into the first stages of 

 science confirms the conclusion which we drew from the 

 analysis of science as now existing, that it is not distinct 

 from common knowledge, but an outgrowth from it — an 

 extension of the perception by means of the reason. 



That which we further found by analysis to form the 

 more specific characteristic of scientific previsions, as con- 

 trasted with the previsions of uncultured intelligence — their 

 quantitativeness — we also see to have been the character- 

 istic alike in the initial steps in science, and of all the steps 

 succeeding them. The facts and admissions cited in dis- 

 proof of the assertion that the sciences follow one another, 

 both logically and historically, in the order of their de- 

 creasing generality, have been enforced by the sundry in- 

 stances we have met with, in which the more general or 

 abstract sciences have been advanced only at the instiga- 

 tion of the more special or concrete — instances serving to 

 show that a more general science as much owes its progress 

 to the presentation of new problems by a more special 

 science, as the more special science owes its progress to 

 the solutions which the more general science is thus led to 

 attempt — instances therefore illustrating the position that 

 scientific advance is as much from the special to the general 

 as from the general to the special. 



