CHAPTEE II. 



THE UNITY OF SCIENCE. 



CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 



SINCE science presumes to take the whole uni- 

 verse for its province, and faces the immense prob- 

 lem of the order of nature, it is not surprising that 

 a division of intellectual labour has been found con- 

 venient, and that separate sciences have been defined 

 off, each with particular problems and special meth- 

 ods. This is an adaptation to the shortness of hu- 

 man life and the limitations of human faculty, for 

 while there is nothing but laziness and mis-education 

 to hinder an intelligent citizen from having scientific 

 interest in all orders of facts, the long discipline 

 which a science requires renders it impossible that 

 any average man will succeed in gaining masterly 

 familiarity with more than one department of knowl- 

 edge. 



The title of the old Scotch professorships of " Civil 

 and Natural History " perhaps expressed more than 

 one good idea, for instance, that man must be 

 studied in relation to his environment, or, again, that 

 the history of non-human organisms might have some 

 light to throw upon the history of mankind, but the 

 ideal suggested was too ambitious for ordinary mor- 

 tals. The fact is that a compromise has to be made 

 between two desirabilities. On the one hand, the 



