322 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
But such comparisons of the various ethical systems, however 
interesting, would lead into ground for unnecessary controversy. 
The object of the present paper, probably the first which has 
attempted to organise the whole body of our recorded social know- 
ledge into a form presentable to the cultivators of the preliminary 
sciences, will have been sufficiently gained if the unity and continuity 
of these, with the social and moral sciences, has been made in some 
respects clearer than heretofore, and if the mode of treatment and 
arrangement of the facts of social science therein proposed be ad- 
mitted as satisfactory and serviceable. 
