IHH ■ to — » — M — — ■■■--- — LIBRARV OF CONGRESS. Co]iuriii' •' J) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V <\ \roperly be restricted to the mental and moral laws of social organization and development; since the higher and final class of religious phenomena, if sought in this direc- 60 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. tion, can only be reached by a further ascent through comparative theology, in the study of the different religions of mankind. Emerging at length, by this new method of ap- proach, into the religious sciences, we find them at once distinct and pre-eminent. No other and higher class of facts remains, and therefore no further class of sciences. The religious phe- nomena of humanity, though deeply involved in both the individual and the social organism, are nevertheless themselves presented in an ex- tra-human or superhuman region, by what the latest scientific thought defines as the Absolute Reality, unknowable and inconceivable, how- soever practically treated, whether as a mere ideal personification or as a real personality. And thus, at the summit of the sciences we have reached a limit which divides the empir- ical from the metaphysical region of inquiry. But into that transcendental realm we are not yet ready to venture. Turning to retrace our steps, let us still further test the series in a de- scending order, by imagining one supporting link after another removed or displaced. Take away the social laws which uphold religious phenomena in history, and nothing of religion would be left but savage superstition or sub- jective illusion. Take away the mental laws which uphold social phenomena, and there THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 61 could be no organization and development but that of animal tribes revolving in the same cir- cles from generation to generation. Take away the organical laws which uphold mental phe- nomena, and the intellect of man, alike with the instinct of the brute, would disappear. Take away the chemical laws which uphold or- ganic phenomena, and the whole vegetable world would wither away into a volcanic waste. Take away the physical laws, which uphold chemical phenomena, and nought would remain but an inorganic mass. Ascend or descend the scale of nature, you find its ranks nowhere broken, and never inverted. And the concatena- ted classes of facts require corresponding orders of concatenated sciences. However much either the sciences or the facts may overlap and re- turn into each other, they still form one com- pact series, like a spiral staircase winding from earth to heaven. We have seen how facts are connected in space, and how they are connected in time ; but it still remains to connect these connections, in order fully to adjust the scheme of the sciences to the actual framework of nature. Now the progress of research has already begun to show that the same procession of phenomena from the simple to the complex which obtains upon the earth, prevails also, in part at least, through- 62 THE ORB PR OF THE SCIENCES. out the heavens, and therefore the sciences, con- forming to the phenomena, combine a collateral with their linear arrangement, embracing spa- cial comprehension in the temporal succession. In other words, physical science, in both its ce- lestial and terrestrial provinces, precedes and supports chemical science, as chemical science, in both its celestial and terrestrial provinces, rests upon physical and precedes organical science. Mr. Spencer, by his magnificent doctrine of uni- versal evolution through space and time, has un- wittingly afforded a foundation for this vast se- rial arrangement ; and Mr. Fiske has aided it, while repudiating it, by suggesting sciences of development or genesis, such as astrogeny, bi- ogeny, sociogeny, which exactly comply with its conditions. It would be easy, in accordance with such views, to trace the successive sci- ences through the successive stages of that mighty development whieh is supposed to have proceeded from an indefinite antiquity through- out immensity; the physical sciences, as dis- played in the ancient sidereal nebulae, revolving and condensing into galaxies, suns, and planets, radiating heat and light ; the chemical sciences, as displayed in the molten core and hardened crust of our earth, with its slowly forming strata of rocks and soils ; the organical sciences, as displayed in the flora and fauna which have THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 63 flourished and decayed, with increasing com- plexity and refinement of structure, until at length man appeared as the paragon of animals ; the psychical sciences, as displayed through the varying scale of sense, instinct, understand- ing and reason, infant and adult, rude and cul- tured ; the social sciences, as displayed in the or- ganizing and evolving races and peoples, with their advancing arts, polities, and civilizations ; and at last the religious sciences, as displayed in growing traditions, creeds, and cults, Pagan and Christian, ever struggling for ascendancy and prevalence. And it would thus be found that the evolutionary series of facts throughout space and time, at least as far as it has yet been traced, everywhere and always supports the corresponding series of sciences, ranging like mountain peaks, which rise one above another, from the solid ground, until they are lost from view in the clouds. In further proof and illustration of this order of the sciences, let it be observed, in the first place, that it is also the order of their his- toric evolution. It is true, such a coincidence would not be indispensable. The historic pro- cedure is not always and necessarily normal or philosophical. There have been great ebbs and floods of the sciences, as Bacon expressed it, with the rise and fall of empires. Man, too, is 64 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. not the measure of nature, and to an intellect sufficiently enlarged or able even in fancy to free itself from terrestrial limitations and vicis- situdes, the true universal order of knowledge might still appear accordant with the universal order of facts however much it had become confused in the human consciousness, or de- ranged by the processes of human research. As a matter of fact, however, no such general confusion or lasting derangement has taken place. The history of the sciences shows that they have actually proceeded, and are still pro- ceeding, serially from simple to complex facts, throughout space and time. All the physical sciences have long been and still are greatly in advance of all the psychical sciences, and each in particular in advance of its predecessor — chemistry ahead of biology, and psychology ahead of sociology. The defects which Mr. Spencer has exposed in the Comtean series do not pertain to the serial principle itself, as more strictly and fully applied, and the mutual helpfulness and interaction of the sciences upon which Mr. Fiske has enlarged, have nothing to do with the question of their relative advance- ment in scientific exactitude and completeness. Astronomy, as a physical science, is centuries older than chemistry, as chemistry is at least half a century older than biology; and though THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 65 the two younger sciences have given to astron- omy the spectroscope and the Spencerian theory of evolution, yet they have not thereby over- taken their elder sister in the race for exact knowledge. It is still true, in the main, that our science of the heavenly bodies is more per- fect than that of our own bodies and of sur- rounding phenomena, since we can predict eclipses centuries hence to the minute, while we cannot foretell the state of the weather or of our health a single week, simply because of the cumulative complexity and contingency of the latter class of facts. And judging the future by the past, we shall doubtless continue thus to master phenomena in the order of their relative generality and independence of one another. Tried, therefore, by any of the tests of scientific perfection — mathematical exactitude, theoreti- cal consistency, power of prevision — it will be found in all history that the simpler sciences have ever led and still lead the more complex sciences as in serried ranks without a break or a recoil. In the second place, this order of the sci- ences is also the order of our logical conve- nience. It is the true psychological as well as cosmological and chronological order. Even if it were not, we have maintained it would still be tenable as the only philosophical arrange- 66 TEE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. ment of knowledge. It is not to be presumed, in advance of any experience, that nature must present her phenomena to us in a strictly logical succession, adapted to our narrow faculties and modes of investigation, so that what is first and last in our course of reasoning must also be what is first and last in her course of devel- opment. Nor would any preconceived scheme of research which we might frame necessarily prove the most suitable and serviceable when applied in the actual process of scientific in- quiry. On the contrary, history has developed a scheme quite different from that which men might have anticipated as most probable, and which at times they have blindly pursued as most promising. Naturally engrossed with the adjacent and impressive phenomena of their own bodies and minds, they essayed for cen- turies to construct the mental before the physi- cal sciences, psychology and physiology in ad- vance of chemistry and astronomy. But now that by hard and long experience we have been forced to follow the order of facts in our researches we can see, in the light of our own failures and successes, that such an order is supremely rational as well as natural, and that in adopting it we are but acting on the logical principle that we must master the simple be- fore advancing to the complex phenomena, and THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 67 study both in their essential dependence and connection. In other words, we have found that logically we must proceed from physics to chemistry, and from chemistry to biology ; and we are beginning to see that we must ascend through physiology into psychology and soci- ology, and that even theology as an empirical science must be studied in its historical devel- opment in human society before it can acquire all the data needed for its completion. Thus does nature, in spite of the perversity of man, like a severe yet kindly teacher, oblige him to begin at the lowest round in the ladder of the sciences, and toil patiently upward, from one degree of attainment to another, with increas- ing skill and ardor, toward the fulness of per- fect knowledge. In the third and last place, this order of the sciences is also the order of their practical im- portance. Mere utility, indeed, as we have already seen, is not a philosophical principle of classification, unless it be in the so called prac- tical sciences or scientific arts. It is conceiv- able that pure theoretical knowledge, following the general succession of facts in the universe, might proceed independently of man, or might prove wholly insusceptible of adjustment to his concerns. As it is, however, the most ab- stract science, though pursued only from a dis- 68 TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. interested love of knowledge, will often in its practical applications surprise the world with vast benefits, and compel the vulgar to turn and heap their applauses upon the man whom they may have pitied as a stiff pedant, losing himself in wordy nonsense, or a mild enthusi- ast seeking new reasons for very old facts. Condorcet has strikingly observed, that the sailor, whom an exact calculation of longitude preserves from shipwreck, owes his life to a theory conceived two thousand years ago by men of genius who were thinking of nothing but lines and angles ; and in our own day we have seen a toy-like battery in the college lecture- room of Professor Joseph Henry become that miracle of modern civilization, the Atlantic Telegraph, in the hands of the more utilitarian inventor. And upon this principle as thus guarded, we shall find that the scale of the sci- ences with their issuing arts most wonderfully agrees with the scale of human interests ; the least important being at the base, and the most momentous at the summit, while those of sub- ordinate significance fill the intermediate ranks. To state it differently, man as the microcosm appears to have in his constitution a gradation of relations and capacities, corresponding to the gradation of phenomena which he seeks to know by his science and to modify by his art. THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 69 The physical, chemical, and organical sciences lead up through the mineral, vegetal, and ani- mal kingdoms of which he is the organic head and lord ; while the psychical, social, and re- ligious sciences ascend through still higher realms of human interest toward the highest of which he can conceive : and in the train of these linked sciences follow such useful arts as commerce, manufactures, agriculture; such aesthetical arts as music, painting, arch- itecture ; and such moral arts as medicine, jurisprudence, "and divinity. So does science, in conducting her votaries through the diffi- cult school of nature, reward their fidelity with ever-gathering laurels and trophies for the advantage and exaltation of our -common humanity. If we now seek for a compact result of this discussion in some convenient working classifi- cation, which shall be adapted to the exist- ing state of our scientific knowledge, without expressing its more theoretical domains and boundaries, we may obtain it by arranging, as in the following table, a parallel series of prin- cipal or capital sciences, embracing only such provinces of facts as are now actually under scientific investigation and bearing familiar names, etymologically descriptive of their areas and limits : 70 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCES. PRINCIPAL SCIENCES. Celestial and Terrestrial. Physical. Chemical. Organical. Psychical. Social. k Religious. Physical. Psychical. Astronomy. Geology. Anthropology. Psychology. Sociology. Theology. In this scheme each Principal Science repre- sents, in a concrete form, the parallel group of Fundamental Sciences to which it corresponds, and includes, as its special domain, all of those Fundamental Sciences from which it is not ex- cluded by its immediate predecessor and suc- cessor in the series. Astronomy, the science of the stars, being the most comprehensive science in space and time, embraces the whole region of celestial physics, chemistry and organics, and the unknown realms of celestial ethics and politics, together with the unsolved problems of the origin and destiny of galaxies, suns and planets. Geology, the science of the earth, as distinguished from the other planets, embraces the region of terrestrial physics, chemistry and organics, with the unsolved problems of the ori- gin and destiny of the globe, and of the stratas, floras and faunas upon its surface. Anthropol- ogy, the science of mankind as distinguished from the other animal races, includes physiol- ogy, ethnology, philology, archaeology, together with the unsolved problems of the origin and destiny of human races, languages and arts. THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 71 Psychology, the science of the mind as distin- guished from the body, embraces aesthetics, logic, and ethics, with inquiries into the origin and destiny of the soul and the development of its sensations, cognitions and emotions. Sociology, the science of society as distinguished from the individual, includes technics, economics, and politics, with inquiries into the origin and destiny of the family and the state, and the development of civilization. Theology, the science of religion, as distinguished from poli- tics, includes comparative and theoretic theology, with inquiries into the origin and destiny of tra- ditions, creeds, and cults, and the development of essential religion. And thus the sciences tower upward to a summit, from whence, as from a mountain peak, we may survey the vast region of human research, with its remote front- iers fading into the far horizon of infinite space and time, and its nearer provinces, spread out be- neath us, like cantons bounded by thread-like hills and rivers, and dotted with shining cities and villages, that serve to mark how far the works of man have encroached upon the wilds of nature. We have at length reached a point in the investigation where some larger and more pre- cise definitions of science are needed. Hith- 72 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. erto we have simply maintained that facts are the material of scientific knowledge, without inquiring into the cognitive process itself ; but facts, in the course of that process, as it is well known, have become decomposed into their sub- jective and objective elements under the names of phenomena and noumena, the former refer- ring to things as they appear or are manifested to our senses, and the latter to things as they exist by themselves and only in our thought. And it is now a moot question whether nou- mena as well as phenomena should be included within the field of scientific inquiry, or, in other words, whether only the patent laws of facts, their mere coexistences and successions, or also their occult substances and causes, are scientificably knowable. To this question may be applied our next principle. IV. A philosophical scheme of the sciences should embrace both their empirical and their metaphysical divisions in logical correlation. The important distinction between empiri- cal and metaphysical inquiry which obtains in every class of facts, and therefore in every sci- ence, is as old as Aristotle, was emphasized by both Bacon and Newton, and at length thor- oughly excogitated by Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. But it has been reserved for Comte to THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 7$ formulate it into a supposed law of scientific development under which, it is claimed, that the empirical region of phenomena and laws have been finally separated from the metaphys- ical region of entities and causes as by an im- passable gulf, and the former retained as the only legitimate field of positive science, while the latter is to be forever abandoned as a mere realm of superstition and speculation. Whatever may be said of the truth or error of this law, viewed simply as a law of the evolution of em- pirical science, it cannot be denied that by pro- claiming it, Comte has done a lasting service to both parties in the controversy, and opened the way, however unwittingly, to a just and final definition of their several provinces and fron- tiers in the domain of philosophy. Never be- fore has the breach between them been made so conspicuous; never before have they been so freed from mutual restraint and interference, the empiricist from the wings of speculation, and the metaphysician from the clogs of expe- rience ; never before have they proceeded apart, each his own way, to so wild extremes, as for example in the systems of Comte and Hegel ; and consequently never before has the philosophic mind been so favorably poised for healthy reactions towards the true, safe, inter- mediate position. Tn calling attention to some 74 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. of these reactions from the empirical side, my present aim is not at all to enter a plea for the study of metaphysics, still less to discuss its methods, but simply to claim for it its due place on the chart of the sciences. If it would be unphilosophical, as we have seen, to exclude any known class of facts from the field of legiti- mate research, still more unphilosophical would it be to debar any portion of their reality from investigation, merely because it rests under an opprobrious name, or has hitherto seemed to baffle inquiry. No scheme of the sciences eould be complete which would shut out one entire hemisphere of existence from view as effectually as if it were the farther side of the moon. Its very occlusion and mystery have been a constant challenge to the greatest in- tellects of our race, and the recent discoveries in physical science, especially in celestial phys- ics, if not themselves largely metaphysical tri- umphs, should at least warn us that the most transcendental realms of nature, through un- locked for avenues, may yet be thrown open to our curiosity, and have their nebulous vague- ness resolved into lucid stars and worlds of life. At the outset of this inquiry, it should be re- membered that Comte himself merely ignored the metaphysical region, arbitrarily and indeed somewhat contemptuously, but without erecting THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 75 any cognitive theory as a barrier against it. In this reserve he was, perhaps, wiser than some of his disciples and critics. It was enough for him to restrict enijjirical or positive science to the study of observed phenomena, and turn his back upon all inquiry into their essential na- ture and origin as mere infantile curiosity or vain speculation. And he claimed to do this, as we have said, not in virtue of any metaphysi- cal doctrine of knowledge and being, which he had framed, but in consequence of an empirical law which he had discovered, and which he ap- plied to the positive sciences alone, without so much as examining the claims of metaphysics to any different method and procedure. It is plain, therefore, that metaphysic has suffered no curtailment or invasion from Comte other than the popular fling at it, which its name may convey. Indeed, it was his habit to stigma- tise as metaphysical, not merely all essences and causes, but even such phenomena as seemed to him inaccessible because of their remoteness and complexity ; and he rashly forbade certain problems in sidereal dynamics, geology, and bi- ology, which have since been solved, or are in a fair way to solution. In a word, his whole system is purely negative in its bearing upon true metaphysics. Even though it were fully adopted, it would still be not incompatible, as 76 THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. Stuart Mill has shown, with sound metaphysi- cal conceptions of time, space, force, life, and mind; while, if freed from its grotesque theory of religion, it might even be held consistently, as it has been actualty, with some of the most transcendental forms of theology. " The Eng- lish positivism," says M. Janet, distinguishing- it from the French, " has a psychology and a metaphysic, and consequently treats of prob- lems which are not in the domain of the posi- tive sciences." German and Italian positivism, also, according to Professor Barzellotti, are " at bottom metaphysical." But whilst Comte was thus content simply to ignore the metaphysical realm as unknown, Mr. Herbert Spencer has essayed to prove it also unknowable, partly from the relative nature of our cognitive faculties, and also from the con- tradictory character of our ontological concep- tions. A passing remark upon each of these points seems requisite. As to the doctrine of relative knowledge, the cardinal tenet of the school, it may be doubted if there has ever been a controversy involved in such mere word-puzzles and logomachies. When Professor Fiske, tersely putting the case with so much apparent clearness, affirms that " no patience of observation or cunning of ex- periment can ever enable us to know the merest THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 77 pebble as it exists, out of relation to our con- sciousness," every thing depends upon the defi- nition of consciousness. If it simply means in- tellect or knowledge, the statement amounts to the mere truism, that we can only know the peb- ble through our knowing powers; but if con- sciousness include subject and object as usually defined, and the meaning is, that we can only know the phenomenal and not also the non-phe- nomenal part of the pebble, then the statement is very far from being true. We can know both, and the latter even more scientifically than the former. We can know, in general, the in- dependent reality of the pebble, the fact of its existence out of relation to our consciousness, and we can know in particular, and with scientific accuracy, some of its non-phenomenal realities, the infinitesimal atoms, the immaterial crys- talline forces, the insensible ethereal properties which lie folded within and behind its phenom- ena, and which can never by their very defini- tion, be phenomenally manifested to us, or even distinctly imagined. In a word, we can know both the otherness and the inwardness of the peb- ble, the thing as it exists by itself and in itself, and among its essential relations to other nou- mena, as well as in its accidental relations to our consciousness. Mr. Spencer himself admits what he terms 78 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. a " transfigured realism," that there is at least some objective existence, though its modes and their connections may not be objectively what they seem. And Professor Tyndall has most abundantly and clearly shown in his eloquent lecture on " The Scientific Imagination, " that beyond the range of phenomena, and beyond the reach of our senses or of any possible micro- scope, there is a world of extra-sensible realities, in other words of metaphysical entities, where science still reigns in all the rigor of mathemati- cal exactitude. As to the other point, the ontological para- doxes, largely derived by this school from the writings of Hamilton and Mansel, it is enough to say at present that such arguments can only return to plague the inventors. If it be main- tained that all our ultimate ideas of time and space, cause and force, the infinite and the abso- lute, when excogitated, will develop endless con- tradictions from which we cannot escape — this would simply be proving too much for the pur- pose. The empiricist who accepts these results must be content to openly build his whole sys- tem of positive science upon confessed absurdity as well as nescience, while the metaphysician who rejects them may still retain all that is true in positive science, and at the same time seek for it a more rational basis. And that the TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 79 reasoning is impracticable, as well as somehow- fallacious, has been conspicuously shown by its own authors, who, not deterred by the logical torpedos which they had planted in the shoals of the metaphysical ocean, have themselves sailed out sheer beyond them on voyages of the most adventurous speculation. Mr. Spencer, whilst professedly renouncing and abolishing all meta- physics, has, nevertheless, on the basis of his own doctrine of knowledge and existence, pro- ceeded to erect one of the most imposing meta- physical systems of the world which has ap- peared in modern times. Beginning with' the transcendental mysteries of primordial matter and force, as displayed throughout infinite space and time, he has exhibited to us a universe in evolution, from the most ancient nebula in the depths of immensity up to the most recent com- monwealth upon the surface of our planet, the whole proceeding under fixed progressive laws which carry with them, in spite of all disclaim- ers, as the late Mr. Chauncey Wright has clearly shown, a cosmological and even teleological im- port, at least as much of order, fitness and result as may be seen in a poem or a drama, however devoid of mere human interest and utility. And this evolving and dissolving universe he has described as the phenomenal manifes- tation of an Absolute Reality or Persistent 80 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. Force, of which we can know nothing except as it may be known in and through the intelligible cosmos which it upholds and which is insepa- rable from it even in our thought. Professor Fiske, besides expounding the Spencerian cos- mogony with great acuteness and force, has based it more firmly upon a purified theism, and done special service on the metaphysical side of theology by exposing very fully a gross form of error known among orthodox divines from the time of Tertullian as anthropomor- phism, or the tendency to clothe Deity with hu- man imperfections and passions. Nor can it be said that the value of these metaphysical contributions is destroyed by the contradictory elements which they somewhat accidentally in- volve, since there are those who know how to disengage them in a pure state, and render them compact and congruous with a very different theory of knowledge and being. Besides such unwitting testimonies, there have also been open avowals in the same quarter. 11 England's thinkers," said Stuart Mill, "are again beginning to see, what they had only temporarily forgotten, that the difficulties of metaphysics lie at the root of all science ; that those difficulties can only be quieted by being resolved, and that until they are resolved, posi- tively whenever possible, but at any rate nega- THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 81 tively, we can never assume that any knowledge, even physical, stands on solid foundations." And soon, as if to fulfill these words, appeared Mr. Lewes, breaking the ranks of the positivists with a flag of truce in his hand, and proposing to annex the whole extra-sensible province of metaphysics and leave the remaining super- sensible region to so-called metempirics and di- vines. At the same time the scientific litera- ture of the day has become leavened with a sort of speculative physics which, so far as it goes, is simply metaphysics without the name, and as recondite as any that has reigned in the schools. " Even some great captains of science," exclaims Mr. Lewes, with the enthusiasm of a convert, " while standing on triumphal cars in the presence of applauding crowds, are ever and anon seen to cast lingering glances at those dark avenues of forbidden research, and are stung with secret misgivings lest, after all, those avenues should not be issueless, but might some day open on a grander plane." In the midst of his physical discussions, Grove was constantly coming on what he termed "the alluring paths of metaphysical speculation." Faraday for a Ion or time doubted whether the conservation of energy should not be treated as a metaphysical question, though at length he decided to view it only on its physical side. And the veteran 82 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. Professor Tait was doubtless only speaking for the great mass of scientific men when he de- clared, in a recent lecture on physics : "There is a science of metaphysics, but from the very nature of the case the professed metaphysicians will never attain to it." Inasmuch then as both the new school of scientific metaphysicians and the old school of professed metaphysicians are together entering and re-entering the trodden field, though from opposite sides, and already coming in sight of each other, it may not be too soon to look for their friendly meeting on common ground, or at least to arrange the terms of correspondence and peace. Every day, it is becoming evident, in the progress of research and of thought, not only that each science has its metaphysical as well as empirical portion, but also that the two, throughout the series of sciences, are in close correlation ; so that the most advanced discov- eries at length abut upon some metaphysical problem, while the most advanced speculations still depend upon some empirical investigation. In physical science, we have been led beyond masses and molecules into a universal aether, quivering between matter and spirit, at once phenomenal and non-phenomenal, impressing our senses in sound, heat, and light, and yet it- self as occult as any quiddity of the school- THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. S3 men. In chemical science we have penetrated through solids, liquids and gases, among infin- itesimal atoms, so definite that they can be mathematically weighed and measured, and yet so indefinite that no microscope will ever de- tect them ; now grouped as solid spheres, cubes or rings, and anon clustered as mere spaceless centres of force. In or^anical science, we have advanced through varying animal and vegetal forms to an ultimate protoplasm, composed of lifeless atoms, yet endowed with living forces an almost infinitesimal cell, and yet a very mic rocosmof molecular wonders; wholly structure less in itself, and yet the source of all the man ifold structures of the organic kingdom. In psychical science, we have ascended through the tissues, the nerves, and the senses, to an in- dividual mind, unseen yet ever seeing, enslaved in matter, yet keeping an ideal empire over material nature, localized in the brain, yet em- bracing the remotest sidereal heavens in its scope. In social science, we have emerged among associated minds, organized in perishing bodies, yet transfiguring all surrounding nature into a new world of art ; fast bound in differ- ent lands, tribes, and tongues, yet knitting continents together with telegraphic nerves and enveloping the world with instantaneous thought ; ever dying, yet transmitting to future 8-4 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. ages the ideas of long-extinct civilizations. And at length in religions science, we have risen above all finite mind, individual or social, in full view of the one Infinite Mind, invisible and incomprehensible, yet manifested in nature and revealed to humanity through all intelli- gible forms. At the same time, on the empirical side of this ascending scale of the sciences, we now find a projected series of correlated forces, physical, chemical, organical, surmounted with a series of co-ordinated wills, individual, social, divine ; while on the metaphysical side of the same scale of the sciences we find a corre- sponding series of efficient and final causes, rising from some great first cause toward some ultimate supreme end, by the subordination of the mineral to the plant, the plant to the animal, the animal to man, the individual to society, and society to Providence. And now it remains to bring these two complemental series into their due logical dependence as supporting segments of one and the same, arch ; to connect forces with their causes laws with their purposes, means with their ends, throughout nature, as fast, but only as fast as science discloses them; to show that sooner or later we reach a point where, in the view of both the empiricist and the meta- THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 85 physician, all forces appear as but potential in one Fundamental Energy, and all laws as but methods of one Universal Mind; and thus to trace, though as yet in part and step by step, the career of the Absolute "Will proceed- ing rationally toward the Infinite Reason, through the physical and psychical phenomena in which it is exerted and expressed through- out immensity and eternity. That the two opposite sections of the sci- ences do thus tend to unite as complemental hemispheres of truth, has long been a rational presentiment, if not an accepted result among the comprehensive intellects that are capable of including them both in their thought. Ba- con, though he remanded final causes to meta- physics, and efficient causes to physics, still maintained that the two agree excellently together as expressing the intentions of Provi- dence in the consequences of nature. Newton, while he bade physics beware of metaphysics, would have us proceed from motions to the forces producing them, and in general from effects to their causes, and from particular causes to more general ones, till we come to the First Cause, which is certainly not mechani- cal. Herschel thought it but reasonable to re- gard the force of gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or a will exist- S(y THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. ing somewhere. The distinguished natural- ist, Wallace, has deemed it no improbable con- clusion, that all force may be will-force, the only primary cause of which we- have any knowledge, and thus the whole universe de- pendent on the will of one Supreme Intelli- gence. Professor Cooke, of Harvard, claims it to be a legitimate deduction of science, based upon the only analogy that nature affords, that the energy which sustains the universe is the will of God, and the law of conservation only the manifestation of His immutable being. As the movements of the body, says Professor Young, the astronomer, are the actions of the personality which inhabits it, so must we re- gard all the wonderful interactions of atoms, and masses of matter as in some way the action of the all-pervading intelligence and power. There is also a teleology, says Professor Lange, the historian of materialism, which is not incompatible with Darwinism, but almost identical with it, and there are ideal develop- ments and speculative extensions of this cor- rect teleology, which lie in a transcendental sphere, but for this very reason can never come into conflict with the natural sciences. Such testimonies — and a host of others which might have been cited — are not the foregone conclusions of professed metaphysicians and the- THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 87 ologians, speaking in the supposed interest of orthodoxy, but the careful deductions of prac- ticed investigators, seeking in a strictly philo- sophical spirit, to give unity to their scientific knowledge, and find rational postulates on which to base a consistent theory of the uni- verse. And even the extreme empiricists and metaphysicians, as they build their systems apart from each other, can only appear in the view of larger, architectonic minds, like work- men unwittingly constructing counterpart frag- ments of the same structure. The world may yet see the " persistent force " of Spencer identi- fied with the " absolute will " of Schopenhauer, the aimless cosinosjof Comte supported by the ab. solute reason of Hegel,and the conflicting will and reason of Hartmann harmonized in the Chris- tian conception of a wise and benevolent Creator. Descending, however, from these remote questions, we now have before us a series of sci- ences, half empirical, half metaphysical,arranged as classified objects of philosophical study. Philosophy or Scientia Scientiarum. Empirical region of phenomena and • laws. Theology. Sociology. Psychology. Anthropology. Geology. Astronomy. Metaphysical region of essences and causes. 8 8 THE 0BDER OF THE SCIENCES. There is but one more problem which this series presents for investigation. It is perhaps the most difficult problem that can task the philosophic mind, and yet a problem that is likely to grow in interest and importance with the general growth of knowledge. I can do little more than briefly state its terms in the form of a concluding proposition. V. A philosophical scheme of the sciences should have its completion in a general science of all the other sciences, based upon their historical and logical evolution. If such a last supreme science be at all feas- ible, its high claims cannot be questioned. Without it the sciences, even if complete in themselves, might still appear as mere frag- mentary masses of knowledge, having no ra- tional coherence and no orderly progression. And to forego the search for it merely because of its intricacy or difficulty would be as un- philosophical as to abandon any other class of involved phenomena ; for the sciences are them- selves phenomena, mental and social phenom- ena, and are presumably regulated by laws which may yet be ascertained. Certainly no scheme of human knowledge could be complete which did not at least provide for this remain- ing field of inquiry, nor would the scientific propensity itself be exhausted and satisfied un- TEE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 89 til it had entered that field and held it as its crowning conquest. As the first condition of such a science, it is plain that all the other sciences must at least have come into being, and reached some degree of development. To attempt even to project it without such data, would be like attempting a science of those remote stars, whose orbits and periods can only be ascertained by successive generations of astronomers, or like attempting any science by mere a priori speculation, in ad- vance of a full knowledge of the facts upon which alone it could be based. Moreover, sci- ence being a function of society, rather than of the individual, society itself, with the individ- uals composing it, must have reached a mature stage of intellectual development before it could clearly seize and solve the problem of organiz- ing the sciences and arts which it had pro- duced. It was in plain disregard of this pre- liminary condition, that the elder Fichte, in his otherwise masterly work, essayed by mere re- flection and reasoning, and in defiance of all ex- perience, to construct a general science of knowl- edge, which should " furnish the ground, not only of all as yet discovered and known, but also of all discoverable and knowable sciences," and which should " absolutely and uncondition- ally determine what man can know, not only on 90 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. the present stage, but on all possible and con- ceivable stages of his existence." And it was one of the chief merits of Comte that, instead of following his predecessors in their transcen- dental search for a metaphysical theory of cog- nition, he apjDroached the problem of a philoso- phy of the sciences through the study of the history of the sciences, as they have been dis- played in all past society, as well as in the in- dividual consciousness. Both attempts have in- deed issued in acknowledged failure, but the latter was at least in the right direction, and may serve to point out the way to future suc- cess. As the second condition of such a science, we should include among its data not only all the other sciences, but all the existing contents of those sciences, metaphysical as well as em- pirical, without prejudice and without parti- ality. History now exhibits to us, in both sections of the sciences, the accumulated results of several thousand years of human thought and inquiry ; on the empirical side, an immense mass of facts, theories, and hypotheses handed down to us by seers, sages and scientists of illustrious name and memory ; and on the metaphysical side a vast body of truths, doc- trines and dogmas, attested by prophets, divines and thinkers of equal eminence and authority ; THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 91 while of neither side can it be said that it has been abandoned by the great majority of leading minds at the present clay. And until all these intellectual materials have been thoroughly sifted and tested, and their scientific value ascer- tained, it would plainly be unphilosophical to prejudge and exclude either class of them, or any portion of them. They are the mental and social phonomena which must be accounted for and explained in any consistent and compre- hensive science of human knowledge. To offer a theory of the sciences which should ignore either the empirical or the metaphysical doc- trines which they now contain would simply be a hasty generalization or induction, drawn from only part of the facts, and destined, it may be, to share the fate of all crude hypotheses. It was the capital mistake of Comte that, while aiming to trace the entire intellectual evolution of humanity, he confined his historical survey to a few nations and to the empirical region of the sciences, cutting off their whole transcen- dental region with mere epithets as " theologi- cal " and "metaphysical." But the healthy separation of empirical research from meta- physical knowledge does not necessarily lead to the destruction of the latter ; nor does the substitution of some new scientific hypothesis for some old theological dogma invariably in- 92 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. volve a lasting logical antagonism between them. There are those (and they already form a large number), who can consistently hold the extreme theory of universal evolution together with the doctrine of absolute creation and find no insuperable difficulty in combining the two ideas in the conception of a personal Creator, immanent yet independent in his own evolving creation. So that even if positive science had succeeded in excluding theology and meta- physics from the whole empirical region, this would not prove that it had exterminated them or even freed itself from all philosophical con- nection within them. On the contrary, it would be much easier to prove from the trans- cendental tendencies of modern physical re- search, that the law of scientific development proposed by Comte, states but half the truth ; that the separation of empirical from meta- physical inquiry is not final and hostile, but convenient and salutary ; that a true philosophy looks forward to their reunion ; and that sooner or later all empirical science runs out into metaphysics, while all metaphysics must at last run up into theology, as the highest and most comprehensive of the sciences, whether empirical or metaphysical. It may be said, however, that a defect in Comte's argument has been supplied by other THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 93 positivists or agnostics who have undermined and exploded the whole metaphysical section of the sciences by means of the doctrine of relative knowledge, and in particular that what has been termed the " deanthropomorphizing tendency" of modern science has proved fatal to the claims of the traditional theology. Hav- ing already noticed the former part of this ob- jection, we need only add a remark as to the latter. Mr. Fiske, in freeing the theistic the- ory of the universe from the grosser anthropo- morphism which lingers in the popular mind, has at times so nearly approximated the views of philosophic divines that it is not always easy to discern any essential points of differ- ence; but when he argues that intelligence, volition and personality cannot be attributed to the Deity whose existence he maintains, he is plainly beyond the tether of his own prem- ises. Until some one has succeeded in so far deanthropomorphizing himself as to take a position external to both the human subject and the divine object of cognition, and from thence to demonstrate that there is no analogy whatever between them, the mass of philos- ophers, with the rest of mankind, will continue to conceive of an infinite and absolute person as the true and only intelligible cause of the world. And this knowledge of Deity, though 94 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. finite in its extent, may have even a firmer basis than the knowledge of other nonmena which do not manifest any correlate likeness to our minds, such as that of the Absolute Reality expressed to us and recognized by us in the whole phenomenal universe. The mere logical difficulty of conceiving or imagining such an Infinite Personality or Absolute Intelligence is a difficulty which cannot even be appreciated until after a feat of most abstract reflection, and which simply transcends, without contra- vening, the process of our thought, while it lies in a superhuman realm of mystery where neither the philosopher nor the divine should rashly intrude.* Without further digression into these inqui- ries, we may now return to our position that a comprehensive theory of the sciences cannot be framed until we shall have at least surveyed, and fairly estimated their metaphysical as well as empirical contents. The extreme empiricist will be ready to exscind from the material of such a science, the theological doctrines that- still stand in the way of his favorite hypothe- ses; as the extreme metaphysician will in like manner hasten to repudiate the scientific theo- * The conception of the Infinite and cognition of the Absolute have been more fully discussed by the author in ' ' The Final Philosophy," Part II., Chap. 3. THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 95 ries which seem to menace his cherished dog- mas ; but the true philosopher will impartially retain both the doctrines and the theories un- der judgment, notwithstanding any seeming breach or disagreement between them, and will reject neither, while yet any available evidence remains to be produced. In a word, he will proceed to construct his science of the sciences in a scientific spirit, and from a sincere love of truth for its own sake. As a third condition of the proposed sci- ence — and the last I shall mention — it should include not merely all the sciences and all their contents, but also all legitimate instruments and factors of knowledge in the metaphysical as well as empirical region of those sciences. Since one design of such a science should be to furnish an organon or body of logical rules of scientific research and evidence, it would plainly be most unphilosophical to neglect or repu- diate any trustworthy means of information or investigation, merely at the bidding of cus- tom and prejudice, or because it had not the precision and force that might seem at first sight desirable ; and such unphilosophical con- ceit and partiality would become flagrant, if displayed in a quarter where additional cogni- tive resources were especially needed. Now, it has been shown by distinguished writers on 96 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. the philosophy or logic of the sciences, such as Comte, Mill, and Lewes, that as we ascend the scale of the sciences our means of exploring them increase with their complexity and diffi- culty ; that in astronomy we are limited to ob- servation through one sense, and that sense mainly as armed with the telescope ; that in terrestrial physics and chemistry we have ob- servation through all the other senses, with the additional aid of experiment ; that in biol- ogy, besides observation and experiment, we have comparison of organs and species ; while in the mental and social sciences, where sensi- ble observation, experiment, and comparison can afford us but little aid, we have a direct personal consciousness and recorded history of the phenomena to be investigated. But this beautiful and luminous principle, according to the same school, must utterly fail us the mo- ment we pass from the empirical into the meta- physical section of the sciences, and begin to deal with insensible realities, powers, and prin- ciples. We then enter a region of " the Un- knowable," where the human reason at once loses itself in endless contradictions, or can only grope by vague intuition or rash specula- tion, with no extraneous light and guidance. At the very point beyond which our senses cannot lead us, we are told that we have no THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 97 other faculties or appliances of knowledge. Even Mr. Lewes, though he claims a large ex- tra-sensible province of metaphysics as scien- tifically knowable, still insists that the supra- sensible world is wholly excluded from the field of research, and likens theologians and metaphysicians, or as he terms them " metem- pirical speculators," to the hapless seekers for perpetual motion. "All experience," he ex- claims, " is against you ; yet if you have any means of proving the existence of an organ which grasps realities beyond those given through sensible experience, we shall admit our error ; but till this is proved, we must hold your efforts to be misdirected." And he adds, that any conclusions brought from that out- lying region into the sphere of phenomena, become amenable to the canons of empirical re- search. To all which the theologians and meta- physicians might reply: "We accept the challenge on the conditions named. All expe- rience is not against us : the best experience of the race is with us ; not merely the experience of a subjective intuition or illumination, but the experience of an objective revelation from the Infinite to the finite reason through both nature and scripture. And this divine reve- lation has been empirically verified in history, and may be logically correlated with the hu- 7 98 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. man reason as a complementary factor of knowledge throughout the metaphysical sec- tion of the sciences." Let it be observed that I am not here dis- cussing these questions. It falls within the scope of this essay only to state them as prob- lems which must be met and solved by any philosophy which seeks to include and explain all the intellectual phenomena of humanity in history as well as consciousness. If philosophy be defined as the science of knowledge, it is plain that to determine whether there be a di- vine revelation, making known the otherwise unknowable, is a strictly philosophical ques- tion. It is as much a philosophical question as that of determining the validity, functions, and limits of the human reason as a source of knowledge. And in the present speculative crisis it is the most pertinent philosophical question which could engage the attention of the scientific world. We have grown familiar with a subtle agnosticism which threatens to extinguish one of the very eyes of philosophy, and paralyze an entire half of the body of knowl- edge. It claims to have demonstrated that the Absolute is unknowable, and a revelation therefore metaphysically impossible ; and in some of the higher circles of thought and cul- ture, it accepts this result with a tone of com- THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 99 placent tolerance which should only proceed from assured knowledge. But all the while it is strangely forgetting, or more strangely ignor- ing an immense mass of empirical proofs of such a revelation, which date beyond the earli- est dawn of science, which have been accumu- lating for thousands of years in the view of the most piercing intellects of every generation, and which may claim to be as scientific in their nature as the astronomy of Copernicus, or the Prin cipia of Newton. And now it is for the philosopher, from his independent point of view, seeking all possible means of knowledge in the sciences, to sift this evidence, and decide whether it is scientifically probable. He may do this, if he will, with no moral or practical intent, from the mere desire to ascertain the limits and means of knowledge, as philosophi- cally as if he were examining an essay on the human understanding instead of a treatise on the Christian evidences. If he rejects those evidences, he will at least have certainty where before he had only conjecture ; but if he ac- cepts them, it will then be in order for him to admit the duly-attested divine revelation as a legitimate factor of metaphysical knowledge, and proceed to adjust it to the human reason as a corresponding factor of empirical knowl- edge in the scale of the sciences. 100 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. If it be said that our evidence of such a rev- elation is confessedly not demonstrative, and as yet not certain enough to serve any philo- sophic or scientific purpose, though sufficient for the ends of religious faith — it may be replied, that it is evidence of the same kind, if not of the same degree as that which upholds the en- tire fabric of experimental knowledge. It should be remembered that there are sceptics in empirical as well as metaphysical science, who decry not merely our cognitive faculties, but the whole inductive procedure of reason. Pro- fessor Stanley Jevons concludes his logical dis- cussion of the principles of science with the assertion that the certainty of our scientific in- ferences is to a great extent a delusion ; that the uniformity of nature is an ambiguous ex- pression, and the reign of law an unverified hy- pothesis ; and that there is an infinite incom- pleteness even in the mathematical sciences. It is also well known, that some of the most practiced investigators and successful discov- erers have never mastered the logic which they unconsciously used in their researches. Yet this does not deter the philosopher from accepting the vast body of physical science which rests upon that logic. Nor does the fact that the logic of Christian evidence, though ever increasing is still incomplete, oblige him to dis- THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 101 card that evidence together with the whole mass of metaphysical truth which it sustains. He need not reject revelation, or prejudge its con- tents, because its credentials have not all arrived. He may even find the internal evidence strengthening the external, as well as the exter- nal enforcing the internal ; science corroborat- ing revelation and revelation completing sci- ence, as the two ever mount together toward the fullness of absolute truth. Let him but once, on due evidence, admit revelation as well as reason into the sphere of philosophic inquiry, and his remaining task would not be difficult. He would find that in each science and through the whole series of sciences, the two factors of knowledge mutu- ally limit, support and complement each other — reason predominating in astronomy, where com- paratively little is revealable; revelation pre- dominating in theology, where comparatively little is discoverable; while neither predominates in the midway science of psychology, where the discoverable and the revealable are more nearly balanced. And it would thus appear, that in the metaphysical as well as empirical re- gion, our means of investigation increase with the difficulties which meet us, and that the sciences, instead of continuing as a mere medley of theoiies and doctrines, may be logically or- 102 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. ganizecl into a system of perfectible knowl- edge. With this general statement of the last and highest problem of philosophy, the object of* the present essay is accomplished. We have traced the history of previous attempts to classify human knowledge, and have examined the systems which survive in our own day. The result is a scheme combining any just prin- ciples upon which they have proceeded, but more accurately and fully applying those prin- ciples to the existing state of scientific knowl- edge. The sciences have been arranged in a serial order, corresponding to the different classes of facts which they have themselves dis- closed in their own progress. Theology, as well as psychology, has been added to the series and placed in its due rank and relations as an empirical science of religion. The em- pirical division of all the sciences has been put in connection with the metaphysical division in which they find their logical complement. And the whole series has been crowned with a terminal science of all the other sciences, de- signed for their organization and completion. Bringing all together into one view, we may picture the tree of knowledge as having its roots in logic and mathematics, its trunk ascend- ing through the physical and the psychical TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 103 sciences with their several empirical and meta- physical branches, and its flower in philosophy as the science of the sciences, while its fruitage would appear in their correspondent arts. 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