COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



of the concrete sciences has determined that of 

 the abstract-concrete and abstract sciences, and 

 has been determined by it — that, from first to 

 last, synthesis and analysis have gone hand in 

 hand. Such has been the complex order of 

 progression. Men have begun by grouping 

 concrete phenomena empirically. When the 

 groups have become wide enough to allow the 

 disclosure of some mode of force uniformly 

 manifested in them, the operations of this force 

 have begun to be experimentally or deductively 

 studied, all disturbing conditions being as far 

 as possible eliminated or left out of the account ; 

 and thus have arisen the analytic or abstract- 

 concrete sciences. And finally, as fast as the 

 laws of the various manifestations of force have 

 been generalized, the synthetical interpretation 

 of phenomena has advanced by the aid of the 

 knowledge of these laws. As Mr. Spencer well 

 expresses it : " there has all along been higher 

 specialization, that there might be a larger gen- 

 eralization; and a deeper analysis, that there 

 might be a better synthesis. Each larger gen- 

 eralization has lifted sundry specializations still 

 higher ; and each better synthesis has prepared 

 the way for still deeper analysis." Long before 

 Archimedes founded statics, the earliest branch 

 of abstract-concrete science, empirical generali- 

 zations had been made in every one of the con- 

 crete sciences. Astronomy had accomplished 



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