212 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [ft. i. 



were concerned with them." And does not daily experience 

 teach ns the difficulty of getting our legislators to accept 

 the simplest and most completely established principles 0/ 

 political economy ? 



Thus there are at least five -separate factors determining 

 the order and rate at which knowledge progresses ; and it is 

 the interaction of these factors which has made the actual 

 order of scientific development too complex to be embraced 

 in any linear formula, like that proposed by Comte. It is 

 because it recognizes only one of these factors that the 

 Comtean classification fails to represent the historic order in 

 its true complexity. It makes a straight line where it ought 

 to make a system of inosculating spirals. 



Returning now from the historical to the logical point of 

 view, we have to note a still more fundamental error in the 

 Comtean classification. That classification rests primarily 

 upon the distinction, above explained, between the abstract 

 and the concrete sciences. That there is such a distinction 

 cannot be questioned ; but it will not be difficult to show 

 that Comte has made the division incorrectly. When Comte 

 contrasts chemistry with mineralogy, because the one 

 formulates the abstract laws of the aggregation of hetero- 

 geneous molecules, while the other applies these laws to 

 concrete instances actually realized in nature, under the 

 influence of particular sets of conditions, — the distinction 

 must be admitted as valid. But when he similarly contrasts 

 biology with zoology and botany, because the one formulates 

 th.6 general laws of life, while the others merely study the 

 conditions of existence of particular genera and species, 

 the distinction cannot be admitted as valid. In so far as 

 zoology and botany are restricted to the mere description and 

 enumeration of organic forms, they cannot strictly be called 

 sciences at all, but only branches of natural history. In so 

 far as they are anything more than this, they are a consti- 

 tuent part of biology. For in biology, it is the study of the 



