VI. DISCUSSION. OX THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. By H. M. STANLEY. The subject of the Classification of the Sciences has received considerable attention from philosophers, from Plato down to Mr. H. Spencer, but yet we have no generally received classifi- cation, and are, perhaps, not likely to have one. Prof. Jowett thus comments on the subject in the introduction to his transla- tion of Plato's Sophist : " In several of the later dialogues Plato is occupied with the connexion of the sciences, which in the Philebus he divides into two classes of pure and applied, adding to them as elsewhere (Phaedr., Crat., Rip., Polit.} a superintending science of dialectic. This is the origin of Aristotle's Architectonic, which seems, however, to have passed into an imaginary science of essence, and no longer to retain any relation to other branches of knowledge. Of such a science, whether described as 'philosophia prirna,' the science of ovtria, logic, or metaphysic, philosophers have often dreamed. But even now the time has not arrived when the anticipation of Plato can be realised. Though many a thinker has framed a hierarchy of the sciences, no one has as yet found the higher science which arrays them in harmonious order, giving to the organic and inorganic, to the physical and moral, their respective limits, and showing how they all work together in the world and in man." Among recent systems of the sciences, those of Auguste Comte and Mr. Spencer have deservedly received special attention. Comte's classification has been searchingly and severely criti- cised by Mr. Spencer in his Classification of the Science*, and by his disciple, Mr. John Fiske, in Cosmic Philosophy. Mr. Spencer's scheme has been acutely criticised by Prof. Bain in the appendix to his Logic, vol. i., and by Chauncey Wright in an article on the Spencerian Philosophy in the North American R^>:i?w. While we may not admit all the sweeping criticisms made upon Comte by Mr. Spencer and others, still we must admit that Comte's plan of the sciences has been shown to be quite imperfect ; while Comte's scheme was superior to all that had preceded, in that he clearly laid down certain scientific principles, historical and logical, quite in contrast to the fancifulness of many previous classifiers. Still, in his love for wide generalisation, he made his greatest mistake, we think, when he attempted to found his classification upon the concurrence of many principles, instead of rigidly adhering to a single principle. He tried to classify according to all his prin- ciples at once, and he was bent on seeing only what would fit into his conceptions. His whole scheme is carried out in a spirit far too deductive. The truth is, as Mr. Spencer has shown, that 18
