Mr. Darwin's Hypotheses.' Part II. 'Fortnightly Review' for June
1868.

[41] 'Origin of Species,' p. 226.

[42] Of this treatise, no English or French translation has, I believe,
been published. For my own very limited acquaintance with it, I am
indebted to the extreme kindness of my friend, Professor Croom
Robertson, who has most obligingly favoured me with a manuscript version
of the portion referred to in the text.

[43] 'Lay Sermons,' p. 240.

[44] 'Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin,' 1799, pp. 214-6.

[45] 'Auguste Comte and Positivism,' _passim_.

[46] 'History of Philosophy,' 4th edition, vol. ii. pp. 654-735.

[47] Not that so restricted a meaning can, with any propriety, be placed
on positivist definitions of law. See, for instance, that of Mr. Lewes
('History of Philosophy,' vol. ii. p. 701), who defines law to be 'the
invariable relation between two distinct phenomena, according to which
one depends on the other.'

[48] Some few additional random remarks, however, though not permissible
in the text may, perhaps, be less inappropriate in a note.

My scientific deficiencies do not prevent my understanding or, at least,
fancying I understand, that Comte's famous 'Classification of the
Sciences' may be extremely serviceable as indicating in what order the
sciences may most profitably be studied. That a student's general
progress would be swifter and surer if, before entering on physics or
chemistry, he had already made considerable progress in algebra,
geometry, and mechanics, than if he commenced all five sciences
simultaneously, seems probable enough. If, however, the classification
be intended also to indicate historically the order in which the
sciences have actually been studied, I cannot but suspect it to be
misleading. Certainly, if knowledge of number was the earliest knowledge
acquired by man, those savage races which have not even yet learnt how
to count beyond four, must have been content with very few lessons in
arithmetic when turning off to other branches of learning.

As to the measure of success that attended Comte's scheme of creating a
Philosophy of General Science, I presume not to utter one syllable of my
own, preferring to cite what Mr. Mill says of that 'wonderful
systematization of the philosophy of all the antecedent sciences from
mathematics to physiology, which, if he had done nothing else, would
have stamped him on all minds competent to appreciate it as one of the
principal thin