a.Ti.1.] OIlGAXIZATION OF THE SCIENCES. 223 



pressed by any linear series. If we were to represent the 

 respective rates of progress in the different sciences by a 

 device familiar to statisticians ; denoting the sciences by a 

 series of curves, starting from the same point, and constructed 

 with reference to a common abscissa ; marking off the abscissa 

 into equal sections and sub-sections answering to centuries 

 and decades; and expressing the progress of each science at 

 each decade by the length of the ordinate erected at the cor- 

 responding sub-section ; we should see these curves from first 

 to last intersecting each other in the most complicated and 

 apparently capricious manner. Probably the only conspi- 

 cuously persistent relation would be that between the entire 

 set of curves representing the concrete organic sciences, and 

 all the rest of the curves taken together ; of which two sets 

 the former would, on the whole, have the shorter ordinates. 



But on sufficiently close inspection, we should detect, 

 between the sets of curves representing the abstract, the 

 abstract-concrete, and the concrete sciences, a relation equally 

 constant, and far more interesting, though less conspicuous. 

 We should observe that all along the progress of the concrete 

 sciences has determined that of the abstract-concrete and 

 abstract sciences, and has been determined by it ; that, from 

 first to last, synthesis and analysis have gone hand in hand. 

 Such has been the complex order of progression. Men have 

 begun by grouping concrete phenomena empirically. When 

 the groups have become wide enough to allow the disclosure 

 of some mode of force uniformly manifested in them, the 

 operations of this force have begun to be experimentally or 

 deductively studied, all disturbing conditions being as far 

 as possible eliminated or left out of the account ; and thus 

 have arisen the analytic or abstract-concrete sciences. And 

 finally, as fast as the laws of the various manifestations of 

 force have been generalized, the synthetical interpretation of 

 phenomena has advanced by the aid of the knowledge of 

 these laws. As Mr. Spencer well expresses it: "there has 



