230 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY [pt. i. 



tell us of the molecular constitution of the matter from 

 which it started. Geology has been robbed of its cataclysms, 

 and periods of universal extinction ; while both astrogeny 

 and geogeny have assumed a new character through the 

 wide extension of the theory of nebular genesis. There is 

 not a truth in biology which has not been shown up in a 

 new light by the victory of the cell-doctrine; the discovery 

 of natural selection has entirely remodelled our conceptions 

 of organic development ; and the dynamical theory of stimulus 

 has wrought great changes, which are but the beginning of 

 greater changes, in pathology, in hygiene, and in the treat- 

 ment of disease. Psychology, in both its branches, has 

 received a scientific constitution by the establishment of 

 the primary laws of association, and the fundamental law of 

 the growth of intelligence. And sociology, both statical and 

 dynamical, has undergone changes equally important, as we 

 shall see when we come to treat specially of that subject. 

 All this makes up an aggregate of scientific achievement 

 such as the world has never before witnessed in anything 

 like an equally short interval. So enormous is the accumu- 

 lated effect of all these discoveries upon the general habits 

 of thought, that the men of the present day who have fully 

 kept pace with the scientific movement, are separated from 

 the men whose education ended in 1830, by an immeasurably 

 wider gulf than has ever before divided one progressive 

 generation of men from their predecessors. And when we 

 add that both the history of science and the general principles 

 upon which discoveries are made have been, during this 

 interval and largely through the impulse given by Comte 

 himself, more thoroughly studied than ever before, — we may 

 begin to realize how far the resources which we possess for 

 constructing a synthesis of the sciences, exceed the resources 

 which were at his disposal. We shall realize that Comte — 

 at least where physical science is concerned — has come to be 

 almost an ancient ; and we shall see that there may easily be 



