268 COSMIC PBILOSOPJJ Y. [pt. i. 



tious which such writers as Comte and Buckle have obtained 

 from an inductive survey of the facts of human history. 

 Finally I shall apply our central hypothesis to the special 

 problem of the Origin of Man, and show how, from its 

 marvellous success in dealing with the difficult questions of 

 intellectual and moral progressiveness, the Doctrine of 

 Evolution must be pronounced to have sustained the severest 

 test of verification which our present scientific resources 

 enable us to apply upon this great scale. With this most 

 significant and interesting inquiry, our Synthesis of scientific 

 doctrines will be completed. Such ultimate questions as 

 must inevitably be suggested on our route — questions con- 

 cerning the relations of the Doctrine of Evolution to Eeligion 

 and Ethics — will be considered, with the help of the general 

 principles then at our command, in the Corollaries which are 

 to follow. 



At present, however, we are not at the goal, but at the 

 starting-point of this arduous course ; and our attention 

 must first be directed to the search for that ultimate axiom 

 upon which our Synthesis must rest. Where now shall we 

 be"in ? In what class of sciences are we to look for our 

 primordial principle ? The above survey of our projected 

 course has already assured us that we need not search for it 

 among the concrete sciences. Obviously the widest proposi- 

 tion which can possibly be furnished by astronomy, or biology, 

 or any other concrete science, cannot be wide enough to 

 underlie a Synthesis of all the sciences. The most general 

 theorems of biology are not deducible from the most general 

 theorems of astronomy ; nor vice versa. But the most general 

 theorems of each concrete science are ultimately deducible 

 from theorems lying outside the region of concrete science. 

 Where shall we find such theorems? If we turn to the 

 purely abstract sciences — logic and mathematics — we shall 

 get but little help. Useful as these sciences are, as engines 

 of investigation, they do not contain what we are now 



