CHAPTER I 

 MATTER, MOTION, AND FORCE 1 



IN the third book of the " Philosophic Posi- 

 tive," Comte observes that it can hardly be 

 by accident that the word " Physics," which 

 originally denoted the study of the whole of 

 nature, should have become restricted to that 

 science which deals with the most abstract and 

 general laws of the rearrangement of Matter and 

 Motion. This is one of the many profound re- 

 marks scattered through Comte's writings, the 

 full significance of which he could hardly him- 

 self have realized.^ For it will now appear — as 

 the preceding chapter taught us to expect — that 

 the study of Physics (including under that name, 



1 [See Introduction, § 1 5. J 



a For immediately afterwards we find Comte basing the 

 organic sciences upon physics, but excluding astronomy, which 

 he calls an " emanation from mathematics." It is indeed dif- 

 ficult to see how astronomy, which involves the physical ideas 

 of matter, motion, and force, can be an emanation from 

 mathematics, which involves only the purely abstract ideas of 

 space and number. In fact, as above shown (Part I. chap, 

 viii.), astronomy, no less than the other concrete sciences, is 

 dependent upon physics. Here, as elsewhere, Comte was mis- 

 led by his serial arrangement. 



l 37 



