ual weight of the gases, oxygen and hydrogen." As
for anatomical or physiological investigation being less "systematic"
than that of the physicist or chemist, the assertion is simply
unaccountable. The methods of physical science are everywhere the same
in principle, and the physiological investigator who was not
"systematic" would, on the whole, break down rather sooner than the
inquirer into simpler subjects.

Thus M. Comte's classification of the sciences, under all its aspects,
appears to me to be a complete failure. It is impossible, in an article
which is already too long, to inquire how it may be replaced by a
better; and it is the less necessary to do so, as a second edition of
Mr. Spencer's remarkable essay on this subject has just been published.
After wading through pages of the long-winded confusion and second-hand
information of the "Philosophic Positive," at the risk of a _crise
cerebrale_--it is as good as a shower-bath to turn to the
"Classification of the Sciences," and refresh oneself with Mr. Spencer's
profound thought, precise knowledge, and clear language.

II. The second proposition to which I have committed myself, in the
paper to which I have been obliged to refer so often, is, that the
"Positive Philosophy" contains "a great deal which is as thoroughly
antagonistic to the very essence of science as is anything in
ultramontane Catholicism."

What I refer to in these words, is, on the one hand, the dogmatism and
narrowness which so often mark M. Comte's discussion of doctrines which
he does not like, and reduce his expressions of opinion to mere
passionate puerilities; as, for example, when he is arguing against the
assumption of an ether, or when he is talking (I cannot call it arguing)
against psychology, or political economy. On the other hand, I allude to
the spirit of meddling systematization and regulation which animates
even the "Philosophic Positive," and breaks out, in the latter volumes
of that work, into no uncertain foreshadowing of the anti-scientific
monstrosities of Comte's later writings.

Those who try to draw a line of demarcation between the spirit of the
"Philosophic Positive," and that of the "Politique" and its successors,
(if I may express an opinion from fragmentary knowledge of these last,)
must have overlooked, or forgotten, what Comte himself labours to show,
and indeed succeeds in proving, in the "Appendice General" of the
"Politique Positive." "Des mon debut," he w