ORGANIZATION OF THE SCIENCES 



see that there may easily be injustice in criticis- 

 ing him as if he were a contemporary. We 

 shall find the legitimate ground for wonder to 

 be, not that he did so little, but that he did 

 so much. And estimating him, as we estimate 

 Bacon, from a purely historical point of view, 

 we shall feel obliged to admit that the grand 

 characteristic of the modern movement in phi- 

 losophy — the continuous organization of scien- 

 tific truths into a coherent body of doctrine — 

 found in Comte its earliest, though by no means 

 an adequate exponent. Previous to him, as 

 M. Littre is right in reminding us, the field 

 of general speculation belonged to metaphysics 

 or theology, while science dealt only with spe- 

 cialities. It was owing to an impulse of which 

 Comte is the earliest representative, that the 

 tables were turned. The field of general specu- 

 lation is now the property of science, while 

 metaphysics and theology are presented as par- 

 ticular transitory phases of human thought. 1 

 Whatever, therefore, may be the case with Mr. 

 Spencer — whose entire originality cannot for a 

 moment be questioned — it is not true of the 

 great body of scientific thinkers, that they stand 

 in essentially the same position in which they 

 would have stood had Comte never written. 

 The course of speculative inquiry during the 

 past forty years would no more have been what 

 1 Littre, Auguste Comte, p. 99. 



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