CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES 85 



"primary or summary philosophy," and included 

 an inquiry into "transeendentals, or the adven- 

 titious conditions of beings." Bacon's scheme 

 formed the basis of the gigantic work of the 

 French Encyclopaedists, but they might well 

 have had a better. It was founded on a false 

 idea of Memory, Imagination, and Reason as 

 separate faculties, giving rise to separate depart- 

 ments of knowledge, and it is full of what seems 

 to us to-day to be extraordinary confusion, such 

 as the entire separation of History from Science, 

 and the separation of Man from Nature. 



COMTE'S CLASSIFICATION. Auguste Comte 

 (1798-1857) recognized six fundamental sciences: 

 Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, 

 Biology, and Sociology; and a seventh supreme 

 or final science of Morals. These, he said, form 

 a linear series, indicative of the order of evolution, 

 for a relatively simple, abstract, and independent 

 science must, he maintained, always come before 

 the relatively more special, complex, and depen- 

 dent. There were two great ideas here, though 

 both were exaggerated. The first is, that the 

 sciences should contribute to the guidance of 

 human conduct, for in morals there is the "synthet- 

 ical terminus of the whole scientific construction." 

 In other words, Science should afford the broad 

 basis for the Art of Life. The second is, that the 

 sciences form a hierarchy, those that deal with 



