universe. We abandon and reject this hope, if we refuse to admit those ideas which must be our stepping-stones in advancing to such a point: and we no less frustrate such an expectation, if we allow ourselves to imagine that from our present position we can stride at once to the summit.

4. Causes in other Sciences.-But if it is, in the sciences just mentioned, impracticable to reduce our knowledge to laws of phenomena alone, without referring to causes, media, and other agencies; how much more plainly is it impossible to confine our thoughts to phenomena, and to laws of succession and resemblance, in other sciences, as chemistry, physiology, and geology? Who shall forbid us, or why should we be forbidden, to inquire whether chemical and galvanic forces are identical; whether irritability is a peculiar vital power; whether geological causes have been uniform or paroxysmal? To exclude such inquiries, would be to secure ourselves from the poison of error by abstaining from the banquet of truth:-it would be to attempt to feed our minds with the meagre diet of space and number, because we may find too delightful a relish in such matters as cause and end, symmetry and affinity, organization and development.

Thus M. Comte's arrangement of the progress of science as successively metaphysical and positive, is contrary to history in fact, and contrary to sound philosophy in principle. Nor is there any better foundation for his statement that theological views are to be found only in the rude infantine condition of human knowledge, and vanish as science advances. Even in material sciences this is not the case. We have shown in the chapter on Final Causes, that physiologists have been directed in their remarks by the conviction of a purpose in every part of the structure of animals; and that this idea, which had its rise after the first observations, has gone on constantly gaining strength and clearness, so that it is now the basis of a large portion of the science. We have seen, too, in the Book on the palætiological sciences, that the researches of that class do by no means lead us to reject an origin of the series

of events, nor to suppose this origin to be included in the series of natural laws. Science has not at all shown any reason for denying either the creation or the purpose of the universe.

This is true of those aspects of the universe which have become the subjects of rigorous science: but how small a portion of the whole do they form! Especially how minute a proportion does our knowledge bear to our ignorance, if we admit into science, as M. Comte advises, only the laws of phenomena! Even in the best explored fields of science, how few such laws do we know! Meteorology, climate, terrestrial magnetism, the colours and other properties of bodies, the conditions of musical and articulate sound, and a thousand other facts of physics, are not defined by any known laws. In physiology we may readily convince ourselves how little we know of laws, since we can hardly study one species without discovering some unguessed property, or apply the microscope without seeing some new structure in the best known organs. And when we go on to social and moral and political matters, we may well doubt whether any one single rigorous rule of phenomena has ever been stated, although on such subjects man's ideas have been busily and eagerly working ever since his origin. What a wanton and baseless assumption it would be, then, to reject those suggestions of a Governor of the universe which we derive from man's moral and spiritual nature, and from the institutions of society, because we fancy we see in the small field of our existing "positive knowledge" a tendency to exclude "theological views!" Because we can explain the motion of the stars by a general Law which seems to imply no hyperphysical agency, and can trace a few more limited laws in other properties of matter, we are exhorted to reject convictions irresistibly suggested to us by our bodies and our souls, by history and antiquities, by conscience and human law.

5. M. Comte's practical philosophy. It is not merely as a speculative doctrine that M. Comte urges the necessity of our thus following the guidance of

"positive philosophy." The fevered and revolutionary condition of human society at present arises, according to him", from the simultaneous employment of three kinds of philosophy radically incompatible;-theological, metaphysical, and positive philosophy. The remedy for the evil is to reject the two former, and to refer everything to that positive philosophy, of which the destined triumph cannot be doubtful. In like manner, our European education, still essentially theological, metaphysical, and literary, must be replaced by a positive education, suited to the spirit of our epoch.

With these practical consequences of M. Comte's philosophy we are not here concerned: but the notice of them may serve to show how entirely the rejection of the theological view pervades his system; and how closely this rejection is connected with the principles which lead him also to reject the fundamental ideas of the sciences as we have presented them.

6. M. Comte on Hypotheses. In the detail of M. Comte's work, I do not find any peculiar or novel remarks on the induction by which the sciences are formed; except we may notice, as such, his permission of hypotheses to the inquirer, already referred to. "There can only be," he says", "two general modes fitted to reveal to us, in a direct and entirely rational manner, the true law of any phenomenon ;-either the immediate analysis of this phenomenon, or its exact and evident relation to some more extended law, previously established;-in a word, induction, or deduction. But both these ways would certainly be insufficient, even with regard to the simplest phenomenon, in the eyes of any one who fully comprehends the essential difficulties of the intimate study of nature, if we did not often begin by anticipating the result, and making a provisory supposition, at first essentially conjectural, even with respect to some of the notions which constitute the final object of inquiry. Hence

the introduction, which is strictly indispensable, of hypotheses in natural philosophy." We have already seen that the "permissio intellectus" had been noticed as a requisite step in discovery, as long before as the time of Bacon.

7. M. Comte's Classification of Sciences.-I do not think it necessary to examine in detail M. Comte's views of the philosophy of the different sciences; but it may illustrate the object of the present work, to make a remark upon his attempt to establish a distinction between physical and chemical science. This distinction he makes to consist in three points";—that Physics considers general and Chemistry special properties; that Physics considers masses and Chemistry molecules; that in Physics the mode of arrangement of the molecules remains constant, while in Chemistry this arrangement is necessarily altered. M. Comte however allows that these lines of distinction are vague and insecure; for, among many others, magnetism, a special property, belongs to physics, and breaks down his first criterion; and molecular attractions are a constant subject of speculation in physics, so that the second distinction cannot be insisted on. To which we may add that the greater portion of chemistry does not attend at all to the arrangement of the molecules, so that the third character is quite erroneous. The real distinction of these branches of science is, as we have seen, the fundamental ideas which they employ. Physics deals with relations of space, time, and number, media, and scales of qualities, according to intensity and other differences; while chemistry has for its subject elements and attractions as shown in composition; and polarity, though in different senses, belongs to both. The failure of this attempt of M. Comte at distinguishing these provinces of science by their objects, may be looked upon as an illustration of the impossibility of establishing a philosophy of the sciences on any other ground than the ideas which they involve.

17 Phil. Pos. ii. 39-398.

We have thus traced to its extreme point, so far as the nature of science is concerned, one of those two antagonistic opinions, of which the struggle began in the outset of philosophy, and has continued during the whole of her progress;-namely, the opinions which respectively make our sensations and our ideas the origin of our knowledge. The former, if it be consistent with itself, must consider all knowledge of causes as impossible, since no sensation can give us the idea of cause. And when this opinion is applied to science, it reduces it to the mere investigation of laws of phenomena, according to relations of space, time, and number. I purposely abstain, as far as possible, from the consideration of the other consequences, not strictly belonging to the physical sciences, which were drawn. from the doctrine that all our ideas are only transformed sensations. The materialism, the atheism, the sensualist morality, the anarchical polity, which some of the disciples of the Sensational School erected upon the fundamental dogmas of their sect, do not belong to our present subject, and are matters too weighty to be treated of as mere accessories.

The above Remarks were written before I had seen the third volume of M. Comte's work, or the subsequent volumes. But I do not find, in anything which those volumes contain, any ground for altering what I have written. Indeed they are occupied altogether with subjects which do not come within the field of my present speculations.