at thinkers had achieved; while incorporating their results it
extended their methods.... What tradition brought was the results; what
Comte brought was the organization of these results. He always claimed
to be the founder of the Positive Philosophy. That he had every right to
such a title is demonstrable to all who distinguish between the positive
sciences and the philosophy which co-ordinated the truths and methods of
these sciences into a doctrine."--_G. H. Lewes._

Criticism on Comte's classification.

Comte's classification of the sciences has been subjected to a vigorous
criticism by Herbert Spencer. Spencer's two chief points are these:--(1)
He denies that the principle of the development of the sciences is the
principle of decreasing generality; he asserts that there are as many
examples of the advent of a science being determined by increasing
generality as by increasing speciality. (2) He holds that any grouping
of the sciences in a succession gives a radically wrong idea of their
genesis and their interdependence; no true filiation exists; no science
develops itself in isolation; no one is independent, either logically or
historically. Littre, by far the most eminent of the scientific
followers of Comte, concedes a certain force to Spencer's objections,
and makes certain secondary modifications in the hierarchy in
consequence, while still cherishing his faith in the Comtist theory of
the sciences. J. S. Mill, while admitting the objections as good, if
Comte's arrangement pretended to be the only one possible, still holds
the arrangement as tenable for the purpose with which it was devised. G.
H. Lewes asserts against Spencer that the arrangement in a series is
necessary, on grounds similar to those which require that the various
truths constituting a science should be systematically co-ordinated
although in nature the phenomena are intermingled.

The first three volumes of the _Positive Philosophy_ contain an
exposition of the partial philosophies of the five sciences that precede
sociology in the hierarchy. Their value has usually been placed very low
by the special followers of the sciences concerned; they say that the
knowledge is second-hand, is not coherent, and is too confidently taken
for final. The Comtist replies that the task is philosophic; and is not
to be judged by the minute accuracies of science. In these three volumes
Comte took the sciences roughly as he found them. His eminence as a ma