ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS 



and of the methods of warfare, due to scientific 

 and industrial progress, renders war ever more 

 costly, and makes the community less willing 

 to engage in it. And these cooperating pro- 

 cesses must go on until — probably at no very 

 distant period — warfare shall have become ex- 

 tinct in all the civilized portions of the globe. 



In so far as the present chapter has dealt with 

 the claims of Comte to be regarded as the 

 founder of Sociology, I believe it is sufficiently 

 proved that these claims cannot be sustained, 

 though in many ways he did more than any one 

 else to prepare the way for such an achievement. 

 If a man can ever be properly said to create or 

 found a science, it is only when he discovers 

 some fundamental principle which underlies the 

 phenomena with which the science has to deal, 

 and which thus serves to organize into a co- 

 herent ratiocinative body of knowledge that 

 which has hitherto been an incoherent empirical 

 body of knowledge. It was in this way that 

 Newton may be said to have created a science 

 of celestial dynamics, and that Bichat is some- 

 times, and more loosely, said to have been the 

 founder of modern biology. In no such sense 

 can Comte be said to have created sociology. 

 Standing on the vantage ground of contempo- 

 rary science, which enables us to discern in out- 

 line the law of progress, we can see not only 

 that Comte was far from detecting that law, but 

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