. You cannot discover the relations of the
facts of human society without reference to the conditions of animal
life; you cannot understand the conditions of animal life without the
laws of chemistry; and so with the rest.

This arrangement of the sciences and the Law of the Three States are
together explanatory of the course of human thought and knowledge.
They are thus the double key of Comte's systematisation of the
philosophy of all the sciences from mathematics to physiology, and his
analysis of social evolution, which is the basis of sociology. Each
science contributes its philosophy. The co-ordination of all these
partial philosophies produces the general Positive Philosophy.
'Thousands had cultivated science, and with splendid success; not one
had conceived the philosophy which the sciences when organised would
naturally evolve. A few had seen the necessity of extending the
scientific method to all inquiries, but no one had seen how this was
to be effected.... The Positive Philosophy is novel as a philosophy,
not as a collection of truths never before suspected. Its novelty is
the organisation of existing elements. Its very principle implies the
absorption of all that great thinkers had achieved; while
incorporating their results it extended their methods.... What
tradition brought was the results; what Comte brought was the
organisation of these results. He always claimed to be the founder of
the Positive Philosophy. That he had every right to such a title is
demonstrable to all who distinguish between the positive sciences and
the philosophy which co-ordinated the truths and methods of these
sciences into a doctrine' (_G. H. Lewes_).

We may interrupt our short exposition here to remark that Comte's
classification of the sciences has been subjected to a vigorous
criticism by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Spencer's two chief points are
these:--(1) He denies that the principle of the development of the
sciences is the principle of decreasing generality; he asserts that
there are as many examples of the advent of a science being determined
by increasing generality as by increasing speciality. (2) He holds
that any grouping of the sciences in a succession gives a radically
wrong idea of their genesis and their interdependence; no true
filiation exists; no science develops itself in isolation; no one is
independent, either logically or historically. M. Littre, by far the
most eminent of the scientific followers of Com