Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/145

Rh properly speaking, the entire domain of the mental sciences, and that it merges into psychology.

Lavrov reckons the morphological and phenomenological disciplines among the natural sciences. The former are those termed by Comte the concrete sciences, whilst the latter are the sciences whose aim it is to establish the laws of phenomena. They are enumerated by Lavrov in the following order: geometry, mechanics, physics and chemistry, biology, psychology, ethics, sociology—a somewhat motley hierarchy, which is obviously reminiscent of Comte as restated by Spencer. Lavrov is at one with Spencer and differs from Comte in affirming the independence and importance of psychology and ethics, because he takes consciousness as his starting point, and is unable to accept the Comtist view of psychology as an appendage to biology. None the less the Comtist and naturalist demands are conceded to this extent, that psychology, ethics, and sociology are made to figure as natural sciences. The use of the term "phenomenological" is doubtless intended to imply that positivism is phenomenological, but the word is unhappily chosen, seeing that (from Lavrov's outlook) the "morphological" sciences have likewise to do with phenomena. With Comte, Lavrov sees in the phenomenological sciences the laws of phenomena. They are, in fact, the "abstract sciences" of Comte.

History does not appear in Lavrov's hierarchy. It is plain, however, that we must understand him to speak of history, now in a wider sense (that which is contrasted with nature), and now in a narrower and more ordinary sense. But the domain of the latter is not clearly defined. We are told merely that history must furnish the interpretation, must explain the significance, of historical development. It must therefore provide a philosophy of history such as was undertaken by Comte as a department of sociology. Lavrov had not attained to clarity of thought upon these fundamental epistemological and methodological questions. For example, he gives very vague explanations of sociology, and in especial he fails to determine the relationship between sociology and history. He defines sociology (which he also speaks of as "social science") as the theory of the processes and events of social development, and also as the science of social organisation (the social organism). But concerning the relationships between these disciplines and history, all he tells us is that