40 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [ft. i. 



respecting physical, chemical, vital, psychical, and social phe- 

 nomena come to be regarded as corollaries of some universal 

 truth — some truth common to all these orders of phenomena 

 — that such a body of doctrine becomes possible. 



Such a body of doctrine is what we call philosophy in dis- 

 stinction from science. While science studies the parts, 

 philosophy studies the whole. While science, in its highest 

 development, is an aggregate of general doctrines, philosophy, 

 in its highest development, must be a Synthesis of all general 

 doctrines into a universal doctrine. When Lagrange, by bis 

 magnificent application of the principle of virtual velocities 

 to all orders of mechanical phenomena, fused into an organic 

 whole the various branches of mechanics which had hitherto 

 been studied separately, this was a scientific achievement of 

 the highest order. When Grove and Helmholtz, by showing 

 that the various modes of molar and molecular motion can be 

 transformed into each other, furnished a common basis for 

 the study of heat, light, electricity, and sensible motion, the 

 result, though on the very verge of philosophy, still remained, 

 on the whole, within the limits of science. But when the 

 principle of virtual velocities and the principle of the correl- 

 lation of forces were both shown to be corollaries of the prin- 

 ciple of the persistence of force — were both shown to be 

 necessitated by the axiom that no force is ever lost — then the 

 result reached was a philosophical result. So when Von Baer 

 discovered that the evolution of a living organism from the 

 germ-cell is a progressive change from homogeneity of struc- 

 ture to heterogeneity of structure, he discovered a scientific 

 truth. But when Herbert Spencer applied Von Baer's for- 

 mula to the evolution of the solar system, of the earth, of the 

 totality of life upon its surface, of society, of conscious intel- 

 ligence, and the products of conscious intelligence, then he 

 discovered a truth in philosophy, — a truth applicable not 

 merely to one order of phenomena, but to all orders. 



These illustrations, however, do not bring out distinctly 



