it had risen. But though it
destroyed the actual belief in the objective reality of these
abstractions, that belief has left behind it vicious tendencies of the
human mind, which are still far enough from being extinguished, and
which we shall presently have occasion to characterize.

The next point on which we have to touch is one of greater importance
than it seems. If all human speculation had to pass through the three
stages, we may presume that its different branches, having always been
very unequally advanced, could not pass from one stage to another at the
same time. There must have been a certain order of succession in which
the different sciences would enter, first into the metaphysical, and
afterwards into the purely positive stage; and this order M. Comte
proceeds to investigate. The result is his remarkable conception of a
scale of subordination of the sciences, being the order of the logical
dependence of those which follow on those which precede. It is not at
first obvious how a mere classification of the sciences can be not
merely a help to their study, but itself an important part of a body of
doctrine; the classification, however, is a very important part of M.
Comte's philosophy.

He first distinguishes between the abstract and the concrete sciences.
The abstract sciences have to do with the laws which govern the
elementary facts of Nature; laws on which all phaenomena actually
realized must of course depend, but which would have been equally
compatible with many other combinations than those which actually come
to pass. The concrete sciences, on the contrary, concern themselves only
with the particular combinations of phaenomena which are found in
existence. For example; the minerals which compose our planet, or are
found in it, have been produced and are held together by the laws of
mechanical aggregation and by those of chemical union. It is the
business of the abstract sciences, Physics and Chemistry, to ascertain
these laws: to discover how and under what conditions bodies may become
aggregated, and what are the possible modes and results of chemical
combination. The great majority of these aggregations and combinations
take place, so far as we are aware, only in our laboratories; with these
the concrete science, Mineralogy, has nothing to do. Its business is
with those aggregates, and those chemical compounds, which form
themselves, or have at some period been formed, in the natural world.
Aga