ngaged from the incidents of particular cases;" which is M.
Comte's definition of "the most simple phenomena." Does it not indeed
follow from the familiarly admitted fact, that mental advance is from
the concrete to the abstract, from the particular to the general, that
the universal and therefore most simple truths are the last to be
discovered? Is not the government of the solar system by a force varying
inversely as the square of the distance, a simpler conception than any
that preceded it? Should we ever succeed in reducing all orders of
phenomena to some single law--say of atomic action, as M. Comte
suggests--must not that law answer to his test of being _independent_ of
all others, and therefore most simple? And would not such a law
generalise the phenomena of gravity, cohesion, atomic affinity, and
electric repulsion, just as the laws of number generalise the
quantitative phenomena of space, time, and force?

The possibility of saying so much in support of an hypothesis the very
reverse of M. Comte's, at once proves that his generalisation is only a
half-truth. The fact is, that neither proposition is correct by itself;
and the actuality is expressed only by putting the two together. The
progress of science is duplex: it is at once from the special to the
general, and from the general to the special: it is analytical and
synthetical at the same time.

M. Comte himself observes that the evolution of science has been
accomplished by the division of labour; but he quite misstates the mode
in which this division of labour has operated. As he describes it, it
has simply been an arrangement of phenomena into classes, and the study
of each class by itself. He does not recognise the constant effect of
progress in each class upon _all_ other classes; but only on the class
succeeding it in his hierarchical scale. Or if he occasionally admits
collateral influences and intercommunications, he does it so grudgingly,
and so quickly puts the admissions out of sight and forgets them, as to
leave the impression that, with but trifling exceptions, the sciences
aid each other only in the order of their alleged succession. The fact
is, however, that the division of labour in science, like the division
of labour in society, and like the "physiological division of labour" in
individual organisms, has been not only a specialisation of functions,
but a continuous helping of each division by all the others, and of all
by each. Every par