Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/35

 II. A COMPENDIOUS CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. BY THOMAS WHITTAKEB. IT is generally allowed that in his Classification of the Sciences Comte furnished a valuable clue to a systematic order in the objective study of nature. Metaphysicians and psychologists find his scheme at fault in its imperfect re- cognition of the place of subjective studies. Still, it may be noted that he himself, in his later speculations, did something to remedy this defect. After Sociology, which he at first regarded as the supreme science, he placed a Science of Morality. Further, in his Synthese Subjective, he began to set forth a statement of fundamental principles underlying all the positive sciences ; and, beyond them all, a view of the cosmos as animated and as related to ends. This indeed was put forward as poetry or religion, and not as demonstrated truth; but it is plainly an approximation to a more "meta- physical " view than that which he had hitherto taken. What I propose is to carry out this completion systematically, with -due recognition of the validity of subjective principles which Comte himself would have repudiated, but which, as is ac- knowledged equally by the successors of Kant and of Mill, are indispensable for a full account of knowledge. In Comte's final scheme the positive sciences follow one another in the order : Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Sociology, Morality. This list itself, to begin with, needs correction. Astronomy, as Mr. Spencer has shown to the satisfaction even of some adherents of Comte, does not properly belong to the series of fundamental or abstract sciences as he conceived them. It is a concrete science in the sense in which Geology is a concrete science. Under Biology, Comte himself made a special division for Cerebral Physiology ; this being his equivalent for Psychol- ogy. When Psychology is recognised by name, it is clearly entitled to a separate place. Lastly, it may be observed that