396 PART V.-WORKING STAGE. 







Lankester's classification of animals in the Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica (llth edition) may be taken as an illustration in this 

 respect. From an ideal viewpoint the classification should omit 

 nothing relevant, include nothing irrelevant, and each class 

 should be rigorously separated from every other. In practice, 

 however, this is frequently impossible, and the man of science 

 has therefore to content himself with a resolute attempt to 

 approach his ideal of classification, leaving it to a succession 

 of inquirers and scholars finally to fulfil abstract methodological 

 requirements. However, just as tentative classification should 

 be resorted to almost from the beginning of the enquiry, 

 especially when the Interim Statement is being reached, so the 

 ultimate step should be to find a higher class under which our 

 classes can be ranged, connecting in this way our enquiry 

 with others which have preceded it. Lastly, it should be noted 

 that, as a broad rule, intimate acquaintance with a subject 

 already involves a fairly advanced stage of classification, and 

 that the latter process is dependent thereon. It is rarely that 

 purely logical considerations account for a classification. Where 

 this seems to be the case, it represents usually either a super- 

 ficial classification or one borrowed from another subject. 



208. It is to be expected that this treatise should suggest 

 how the aggregations of knowledge man has accumulated to 

 our day may be conveniently arranged, or rather re-arranged. 

 The scheme propounded here is neither an abstruse one nor 

 very novel. We naturally place at the head the most com- 

 prehensive science, that concerned with the Cosmos or All, 

 Cosmology. Next, pursuing again evident lines of cleavage, 

 we place all inanimate nature, under Physics; all life and con- 

 nected individual intelligence, under Biology; and the remainder, 

 pan-human, or species-produced, culture, under Specio-Psychics* 

 Each of these divisions is again developed not only along con- 

 ventional lines, but with the object of embracing the totality 

 of human life and activity, while the subdivisions following the 

 four principal divisions, suggest how our detailed knowledge 

 may be tentatively correlated and unified. 1 



1 The following works or essays may be consulted with advantage in 

 connection with the problem of the classification of the sciences: 



Andre-Marie Ampere, Essai sur la philosophic des sciences, 1834-1843. 



Jeremy Bentham, Chrestomathia, Part II, 1817. 



Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophic positive, vol. 1, L e con II. 



M. Cournot, De I'enchatnement des idees fondamentales dans les sciences 

 et dans Vhistoire, 2 vols., 1861. 



R. Flint, Philosophy as Scientia Scientiarium, 1904. 



Edmond Goblot, Essai sur la classification des sciences, 1898. 



Hugo Muensterberg, The Position of Psychology in the System of Know- 

 ledge, Harvard Studies, vol. 1. 



Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 1900. 



Herbert Spencer, The Classification of the Sciences, 1871. 



Carl Stumpf, Zur Einteilung der Wissenschaften, 1906. 



Wilhelm Wundt, Uber die Einteilung der Wissenschaften, Philosophische 

 Studien, 1889. 



