COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



sense of the word. Thus astronomy, at least 

 in its statical department, was a science in the 

 days of Hipparchos. Physics became a sci- 

 ence when Galileo discovered the law of falling 

 bodies. Chemistry became a science, about a 

 hundred and seventy years later, when Lavoisier 

 overthrew the doctrine of phlogiston, and de- 

 tected the true principles of combustion. Bio- 

 logy did not become a science until the very 

 end of the eighteenth century, when Bichat 

 pointed out the relations between the functions 

 of organs and the properties of tissues. Finally 

 sociology has hardly yet become a science ; 

 and many educated persons still regard histori- 

 cal events as happening in no determinate se- 

 quence, and stigmatize, as not only chimerical 

 but even impious, any attempt to formulate the 

 order of such events. 



Here it becomes desirable to pass from sim- 

 ple exposition to criticism. In the Comtean 

 views above set forth we must of course recog- 

 nize a large amount of historic truth. There 

 can be no doubt that anthropomorphic concep- 

 tions soonest disappear from those departments 

 of science which are earliest constituted and 

 most rapidly developed. Nor can there be 

 any doubt that in a vague and general way the 

 Comtean arrangement represents, or at any 

 rate suggests, the historic order of progression. 

 No doubt mathematics is the oldest of the sci- 

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