218 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. i. 



history and formulate the modes of action of actually exist- 

 ing aggregates, from the time when they begin to exist aa 

 aggregates down to the time when they cease to exist as 

 aggregates. 



It is quite otherwise with the abstract-concrete sciences. 

 By all these sciences, actually existing aggregates are im- 

 plicitly ignored ; " and a property, or a connected set of pro- 

 perties, exclusively occupies attention." It matters not to 

 Molar Physics " whether the moving mass it considers is a 

 planet or molecule, a dead stick thrown into the river or the 

 living dog that leaps after it: in any case the curve described 

 by the moving mass conforms to the same laws." So when 

 Molecular Physics investigates " the relation between the 

 changing bulk of matter and the changing quantity of mole- 

 cular motion it contains," constant account is taken of con- 

 nected sets of properties, but no account whatever is taken of 

 particular aggregates of matter. The conclusions reached 

 apply equally to Chimborazo and to a tea-kettle, to the 

 solidification of the earth's crust and to the cracking of a 

 pipe by frozen water. Similarly in Chemistry, while " ascer- 

 taining the affinities and atomic equivalence of carbon, the 

 chemist has nothing to do with any aggregate. He deals 

 with carbon in the abstract, as something considered apart 

 from quantity, form, or appearance, or temporary state of 

 combination ; and conceives it as the possessor of powers or 

 properties, whence the special phenomena he describes result ; 

 the ascertaining of all these powers or properties being his 

 sole aim." So that, from first to last, the object of the 

 abstract-concrete sciences is to give an account " of some 

 order of properties, general or special ; not caring about the 

 other traits of an aggregate displaying them, and not recog- 

 nizing aggregates at all further than is implied by discussion 

 of the particular order of properties." 



Finally, the abstract sciences deal solely with relations 

 among aggregates or among properties, or with the relation* 



