the position that scientific advance is as much from the special to the
general as from the general to the special.
Quite in harmony with this position we find to be the admissions that
the sciences are as branches of one trunk, and that they were at first
cultivated simultaneously; and this harmony becomes the more marked on
finding, as we have done, not only that the sciences have a common root,
but that science in general has a common root with language,
classification, reasoning, art; that throughout civilisation these have
advanced together, acting and reacting upon each other just as the
separate sciences have done; and that thus the development of
intelligence in all its divisions and subdivisions has conformed to this
same law which we have shown that the sciences conform to. From all
which we may perceive that the sciences can with no greater propriety be
arranged in a succession, than language, classification, reasoning, art,
and science, can be arranged in a succession; that, however needful a
succession may be for the convenience of books and catalogues, it must
be recognised merely as a convention; and that so far from its being the
function of a philosophy of the sciences to establish a hierarchy, it is
its function to show that the linear arrangements required for literary
purposes, have none of them any basis either in Nature or History.
There is one further remark we must not omit--a remark touching the
importance of the question that has been discussed. Unfortunately it
commonly happens that topics of this abstract nature are slighted as of
no practical moment; and, we doubt not, that many will think it of very
little consequence what theory respecting the genesis of science may be
entertained. But the value of truths is often great, in proportion as
their generality is wide. Remote as they seem from practical
application, the highest generalisations are not unfrequently the most
potent in their effects, in virtue of their influence on all those
subordinate generalisations which regulate practice. And it must be so
here. Whenever established, a correct theory of the historical
development of the sciences must have an immense effect upon education;
and, through education, upon civilisation. Greatly as we differ from him
in other respects, we agree with M. Comte in the belief that, rightly
conducted, the education of the individual must have a certain
correspondence with the evolution of the race.
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