viewed prior to the chemical; and both physical and chemical
forces are preparatory to vital. So there are reasons for placing Mental
Science last of all. Hence a student cannot comprehend chemistry without
natural philosophy, nor biology without both. You cannot stand a thorough
examination in chemistry without indirectly showing your knowledge of
physics; and a testing examination in biology would guarantee, with some
slight qualifications, both physics and chemistry.

Let us now turn to the other sciences--those that are not fundamental,
but derivative. The chief examples are the three commonly called Natural
History sciences--Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology. In these sciences no law
or principle is at work that has not been already brought forward in
the primary sciences. The properties of a Mineral are mathematical,
physical, and chemical: the testing of minerals is by measurement, by
physical tests, by chemical tests. The aim of this science is not to
teach forces unknown to the student of physics and chemistry; it is to
embrace, under the best classification, all the bodies called minerals,
and to describe the species in detail under mathematical, physical, and
chemical characters. It is the first in order of the _classificatory_
sciences. Its purpose in the economy of education is distinct and
peculiar; it imparts knowledge, not respecting laws, forces, or
principles of operating, but respecting the concrete constituents of
the world. It gives us a commanding view of one whole department of
the material universe; supplying information useful in practice, and
interesting to the feelings. It also brings into exercise the great
logical process, wanted on many occasions, the process of
CLASSIFICATION.

[CLASSIFICATORY SCIENCES.]

So much for an instance from the Inorganic world, as showing the
distinction between the two kinds of sciences. Another example may be
cited from the field of Biology; it is a little more perplexing. For
"biology" is sometimes given as the name for the two concrete
classificatory sciences--botany and zoology. In point of fact, however,
there is a science that precedes those two branches, although blending
with them; the science commonly expressed by the older term,
'Physiology,' which is not a classificatory and a dependent science, but
a mother science, like chemistry. It expounds the peculiarities of
living bodies, as such, and the laws of living processes--such processes
as assimilation,