ORGANIZATION OF THE SCIENCES 



footing, and where practical conclusions are con- 

 stantly based upon the a priori doctrine of in- 

 herent " rights." Here, too, as well as in bio- 

 logy, even the theological point of view not 

 unfrequently appears. The late war between 

 France and Germany was doubtless the occa- 

 sion of many prayers to the " God of Battles." 

 The same persons who, in the regular recurrence 

 of the seasons, in the expansion of heated bodies, 

 in the explosion of fulminating compounds, in 

 the darkness caused by an eclipse, in short 

 throughout the entire realm of inorganic phe- 

 nomena, see nothing but the operations of uni- 

 form forces, nevertheless explain diseases, fam- 

 ines, and political revolutions, upon the hypo- 

 thesis of an overruling Providence extraneous 

 to the Cosmos ; announcing, perhaps, the doc- 

 trine of a divine judgment upon sin, — which 

 is indee4 not a fiction, but the mythologic ver- 

 sion of a scientific truth. 



Not only (according to Comte) has deanthro- 

 pomorphization proceeded more rapidly in the 

 simpler sciences than in the more complex ones, 

 but the generalization of causal agencies, of 

 which deanthropomorphization is the result, 

 took place earlier in the former than in the 

 latter. This is to be seen by comparing the 

 dates at which the sciences respectively ceased 

 to be mere aggregations of empirical knowledge, 

 and became founded as sciences, in the strict 

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