en. tx.] PHILOSOPEY AS AN ORGANON. 251 



insoluble because it involves absolute beginning ; whereas 

 the former is merely a question of a particular combination 

 of molecules, which we cannot solve at present only because 

 we have not yet obtained the requisite knowledge of the 

 interactions of molecular forces, and of the past physical 

 condition of the earth's surface. In short, he would have 

 seen that, while the human mind is utterly impotent in 

 the presence of noumena, it is well-nigh omnipotent in the 

 presence of phenomena. In science we may be said to 

 advance by geometrical progression. Here, in the forty 

 years which have elapsed since Comte wrote on physical 

 science, it is hardly extravagant to say that the progress 

 has been as great as during the seventeen hundred years 

 between Hipparchos and Galileo. If then, in the three or 

 four thousand years which have elapsed since Europe began 

 to emerge from utter barbarism, we have reached a point at 

 which we can begin to describe the chemical constitution of 

 a heavenly body seventy thousand million miles distant, 

 what may not science be destined to achieve in the next 

 four thousand, or forty thousand, years ? We may rest 

 assured that the tale, if we could only read it, would far 

 excel in strangeness anything in the " Arabian Nights " or 

 in the mystic pages of the Bollandists. 



But Comte did not understand all this. He, the great 

 overthrower and superseder of metaphysics, did not really 

 apprehend the distinction between metaphysics and science. 

 Hence every hypothesis which went a little way beyond the 

 limited science of his day he wrongly stigmatized as " meta- 

 physical." Hence he heaped contumely upon the cell-doc- 

 trine, only three years before Schwann and Schleiden finally 

 established it. And hence, when he had occasion to observe 

 that certain facts were not yet known, he generally added, 

 "and probably they never will be," — though his prophecy 

 was not seldom confuted, while yet warm from the press. 



Toward the close of his life, after he had become sacer« 



