acceptation of the word.

Such a complete and exhaustive consideration of the Facts and Causes of
Human Progress as would suffice for the construction of a _Science of
History_, would necessarily include _all_ the Branches of Inquiry above
mentioned. While, therefore, _History_, as it has been used in these
papers, and as it is especially exhibited in the present one, has had
this comprehensive signification, the term is not applied by Comte to
any of the Departments of which he treated; and a very different
meaning, and one much more circumscribed, attaches to the qualified
expression which he uses in its stead. The Dynamic Branch of Sociology
does not appertain, even in his own estimation, to _History_ proper, but
to _The Philosophy of History_, which is the title by which he
designates it. Strictly speaking, it does not appertain to that, in any
broad sense. It is mainly an inquiry into the Theological, Political,
and Social Principles of the Past and Future, and leaves unnoticed many
questions of equal importance with those discussed, and which, in the
constitution of a comprehensive _Philosophy of History_, would occupy an
equally important place.

But leaving this point aside, it is sufficient to indicate the fact that
Comte, in conformity with the plan upon which he proceeded in the
investigation of other Departments of the Universe, eliminated from his
Historical examination all _concrete_ questions, everything relating
primarily to individuals or nations, or to the causes of their peculiar
development; on the same ground on which he set aside Botany, Zoology,
Mineralogy, etc. In the beginning of his treatise on Social Dynamics, he
says:

'We must avoid confounding the _abstract_ research into the laws of
social existence with the _concrete_ history of human societies,
the explanation of which can result only from a very advanced
knowledge of the whole of these laws. _Our employment of history in
this inquiry, then, must be essentially abstract._ It would, in
fact, be history without the names of men, or even of nations, if
it were not necessary to avoid all such puerile affectation as
there would be in depriving ourselves of the use of names which may
elucidate our exposition or consolidate our thought.... Geological
considerations must enter into such _concrete_ inquiry, and we have
but little positive knowledge of geology; and the same is true of