ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS 



finite, cannot be in any anthropomorphic sense 

 personal, and which, as being absolute, must be 

 inscrutable. 



Thus we see that Comte's formula is not 

 fundamental, even as a formula for intellectual 

 development. The process of deanthropomor- 

 phization is not the fundamental fact. The con- 

 tinuous organization of knowledge and general- 

 ization of phenomena is the fundamental fact, 

 of which the continuous deanthropomorphiza- 

 tion is the necessary symptom and result. Now 

 in Part I., chapter ii., we traced the outlines of 

 this continuous organization of knowledge ; and 

 we found that the advance from incomplete to 

 complete knowledge consists in the continuous 

 establishment of groups of notions which are ever 

 more coherent within themselves, while they are 

 ever more clearly demarcated from one another. 

 Now what is all this but a continuous process 

 of differentiation and integration ? When we 

 say that from first to last, from the simplest cog- 

 nitions of infancy to the widest generalizations 

 of science, we cognize phenomena invariably 

 through difference and likeness, we mean that 

 we are continually differentiating notions an- 

 swering to unlike phenomena and continually 

 integrating notions answering to like pheno- 

 mena. Or, to express the same thing in other 

 words, we are continually establishing relations 

 of likeness and unlikeness among our concep- 

 361 



