COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



wait not only until the preceding sciences were 

 founded, but until they were sufficiently ad- 

 vanced to supply it with the general formula of 

 organic development, from which alone the law 

 of social progress could be deduced. It was 

 not enough that Bichat had laid the foundations 

 for a general theory of nutrition, reproduction, 

 and innervation, or that James Mill had estab- 

 lished the fundamental laws of association — 

 though this was indeed much. The new sci- 

 ence had to wait until Von Baer had traced the 

 order in which organisms develop, until Mr. 

 Darwin had shown how through heredity and 

 natural selection organisms become adapted to 

 their environments, and until Mr. Spencer had 

 shown how associated ideas and emotions are 

 slowly generated and modified in conformity to 

 surrounding circumstances. 



All this, of course, could not be foreseen by 

 Comte. But he nevertheless clearly saw-^-and 

 it does honour to his philosophic acumen — 

 that a comprehensive theory of social changes 

 can be obtained only by studying them in the 

 order of their historical dependence. He saw 

 that the laws of sociology are at bottom the 

 laws of history. And especially, from the prac- 

 tical point of view, he saw that no general the- 

 ory fit to serve as a basis for the amelioration 

 of society could be deduced from mere abstract 

 reasonings about human nature, or obtained in- 

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