nd
encyclopedical character of their knowledge, and their power of
co-ordination and concatenation, may claim to be the peers of M. Comte,
and entitled to a vote in the estimation of him. But after giving to his
animadversions the respectful attention due to all that comes from Mr
Spencer, we cannot find that he has made out any case. It is always easy
to find fault with a classification. There are a hundred possible ways
of arranging any set of objects, and something may almost always be said
against the best, and in favour of the worst of them. But the merits of
a classification depend on the purposes to which it is instrumental. We
have shown the purposes for which M. Comte's classification is intended.
Mr Spencer has not shown that it is ill adapted to those purposes: and
we cannot perceive that his own answers any ends equally important. His
chief objection is that if the more special sciences need the truths of
the more general ones, the latter also need some of those of the former,
and have at times been stopped in their progress by the imperfect state
of sciences which follow long after them in M. Comte's scale; so that,
the dependence being mutual, there is a _consensus_, but not an
ascending scale or hierarchy of the sciences. That the earlier sciences
derive help from the later is undoubtedly true; it is part of M. Comte's
theory, and amply exemplified in the details of his work. When he
affirms that one science historically precedes another, he does not mean
that the perfection of the first precedes the humblest commencement of
those which follow. Mr Spencer does not distinguish between the
empirical stage of the cultivation of a branch of knowledge, and the
scientific stage. The commencement of every study consists in gathering
together unanalyzed facts, and treasuring up such spontaneous
generalizations as present themselves to natural sagacity. In this stage
any branch of inquiry can be carried on independently of every other;
and it is one of M. Comte's own remarks that the most complex, in a
scientific point of view, of all studies, the latest in his series, the
study of man as a moral and social being, since from its absorbing
interest it is cultivated more or less by every one, and pre-eminently
by the great practical minds, acquired at an early period a greater
stock of just though unscientific observations than the more elementary
sciences. It is these empirical truths that the later and more special