ch. vrrr.] OBGANIZATION OF THE SCIENCES. 189 



adversely criticizing the Couitean theory, to elicit results which 

 are both true and available for our subsequent inquiries. 



Comte begins by distinguishing two kinds of natural 

 sciences ; the one kind abstract and general, having for their 

 object the discovery of the laws to which the various orders 

 of phenomena conform, in all conceivable cases ; the other 

 kind concrete, special, descriptive, consisting in the appli- 

 cation of general laws to the natural history of the various 

 objects actually existing in the present or past. There is 

 nothing difficult, or even novel, in this distinction, since it 

 corresponds very nearly with that which is ordinarily drawn 

 in scientific treatises between dogmatic physics and natural 

 history. We shall see the difference very clearly by com- 

 paring general physiology, on the one hand, with zoology 

 and botany on the other. The one formulates the general 

 laws of life, whether considered in equilibrium or in the 

 process of development; the other merely enumerates the 

 conditions and mode of existence of each particular species 

 of living bodies. Similar is the contrast between chemistry 

 and mineralogy, of which the latter science is evidently 

 founded upon the former. In chemistry we consider all 

 possible combinations of heterogeneous molecules, in all 

 imaginable circumstances ; in mineralogy we consider only the 

 particular combinations which are found realized in the actual 

 past or present constitution of the terrestrial globe, under 

 the influence of special sets of conditions. A circumstance 

 which well illustrates the difference between the chemical 

 end the mineralogical point of view, although the two science? 

 deal with the same objects, is, that a large proportion of the 

 facts contemplated in chemistry have only an artificial or 

 experimental existence. So that, for example, a body like 

 chlorine or potassium may possess great importance iu 

 chemistry by reason of the extent and energy of its reactions 

 and its affinities ; while in mineralogy, on the other hand, it 

 may be of little importance, because it is but seldom con- 



