CH. XIX.] ILLUSTBATIONS AND CRITICISMS. 253 



In so far as the present chapter has dealt with the claims 

 of Comte to be regarded as the founder of Sociology, I believe 

 it is sufficiently proved that these claims cannot be sustained, 

 though in man} ways he did more than anyone else to pre- 

 pare the way for such an achievement. If a man can ever be 

 properly said to create or found a science, it is only when he 

 discovers some fundamental principle which underlies the 

 plienomena with which the science has to deal, and which 

 thus serves to organize into a coherent ratiociiiative body of 

 knowledge that which has hitherto been an incoherent em- 

 pirical body of knowledge. It was in this way that Newton 

 may be said to have created a science of celestial dynamics, 

 and that Bichat is sometimes, and more loosely, said to have 

 been the founder of modern biology. In no such sense can 

 Comte be said to have created sociology. Standing on the 

 vantage-ground of contemporary science, which enables us to 

 discern in outline the law of progress, we can see not only 

 that Comte was far from detecting that law, but that, 

 with the limited appliances at his command, he could not 

 have been expected to discover it. Nevertheless his 

 contributions to sociology were exceedingly brilliant and 

 valuable, and he did perhaps all that the greatest thinker 

 could have done forty years ago. He arrived at a double 

 generalization of the phenomena of intellectual and material 

 progress, as wide as could then be reached by unaided 

 historical induction ; and he verified this double generaliza- 

 tion by an elaborate survey of ancient and modern history, 

 which, even had he written nothing else, would alone suffice 

 to make his name immortal. It entitles him, I think, to be 

 ranked first among those sociologists who have proceeded 

 solely on the historical method, — on a somewhat higher 

 plane, perhaps, than Vico or Montesquieu, Turgot or Con- 

 dorcet. That generalization, in both its branches, and in so 

 far as it is correct, we have here seen to be a corollary from 

 the fundamental law of social evolution obtained in the pre- , 



