en. ix.] PHILOSOPHY AS AN OEGANON. 253 



result. A remarkable example is furnished by the beautiful 

 researches of the Greek geometers upon conic sections, 

 which, after a long series of generations, have renovated 

 the science of astronomy, and thus brought the art of navi- 

 gation to a pitch of perfection which it could never have 

 reached but for the purely theoretic inquiries of Archimedes 

 and Apollonios. As Condorcet well observes, the sailor, 

 whom an exact calculation of longitude preserves from ship- 

 wreck, owes his life to a theory conceived, two thousand 

 years ago, by men of genius who were thinking of nothing 

 but lines and angles." This is the true view ; and we need 

 not fear that the scientific world will ever adopt any other. 

 That inborn curiosity which, according to the Hebrew legend, 

 has already made us like gods, knowing good and evil, will 

 continue to inspire us until the last secret of Nature is laid 

 bare ; and doubtless, in the untiring search, we shall uncover 

 many priceless jewels, in places where we least expected to 

 find them. 



The foregoing examples will suffice to illustrate the vague- 

 ness with which Comte conceived the limits of scientific and 

 of philosophic inquiry. I have here cited them, not so much 

 for the sake of exhibiting Comte's mental idiosyncrasies, as 

 for the sake of emphasizing the radical difference between 

 his conception of the scope of philosophy and the conception 

 upon which the Cosmic Philosophy is founded. In giving 

 to Comte the credit which he deserves, for having heralded 

 a new era of speculation in which philosophy should be 

 built up entirely out of scientific materials, we must not 

 forget that his conception of the kind of philosophy thus to 

 be built up was utterly and hopelessly erroneous. Though 

 he insisted upon the all-important truth that philosophy is 

 simply a higher organization of scientific doctrines aiid 

 methods, he fell into the error of regarding philosophy 

 merely as a logical Organon of the sciences, and he never 

 framed the conception of philosophy as a Universal Science 



