kers of the age.' In all sincerity, I say that the mere
conception of the enterprise, whose vastness is so luminously expounded
by Mr. Lewes, in the last edition of his 'History of Philosophy,' seems
to me to betoken superior genius. I feel, as it were, simply awe-struck
in the presence of an intellectual ambition, that within the brief span
of one human life could aspire to a mastery over all the sciences,
sufficient, first for co-ordinating the fundamental truths and special
methods, and so obtaining the philosophy of each, and then for
co-ordinating the manifold philosophies so obtained, and--by condensing
them all into one homogeneous doctrine, and blending them into one
organic whole, whereof each part would be seen to depend on all that
preceded, and to determine all that succeeded--transforming all science
into philosophy.

One point however remains on which I shall speak with some confidence,
that, namely, of the inclusion among 'Comte's titles to immortal fame'
of the creation of a Science of Sociology. 'What the law of gravitation
is to astronomy, what the elementary properties of tissues are to
physiology,' that, says Mr. Lewes, in the opinion of Comte's disciples,
'is the law of the three stages to sociology.' But if, as I have shown,
there are not really three but only two stages, the so-called third
stage being simply a return to either the second or the first, the law
of the three stages cannot be much of a law, nor the science of which it
is the essence much of a science.

Mr. Lewes, nevertheless, maintains that M. Comte created Social Science.
Mr. Mill considers that he did not create it, but only proved its
creation to be possible. With all possible deference, I submit that what
he really did was to prove its creation to be impossible.

In a passage of Mr. Mill's 'Positivism,' quoted with approval in Mr.
Lewes's 'History of Philosophy,' and presumably, therefore, expressing
the sentiments of both writers, Comte is described as pronouncing
inappropriate to the Science of Society, the method universally admitted
to be proper to all other sciences--that, namely, of obtaining by
induction the laws of the elementary phenomena, then, from these laws
thinking out deductively those of the complex phenomena, and, finally,
of verifying by specific observation the laws obtained by deduction.
Among social phenomena, he is described as arguing, the elementary ones
are human feelings and actions, the laws of which