THE CHEMICAL ELEMENT.

451

metaphysical abuse. The imperfections of its nature and method of culture, however, cast no doubt upon its rank in the scale of sciences. That rank is settled by the universal principle of decreasing generality; and the principle obviates the worst inconveniences of the multiple character of physics by instituting a gradual transition from the barological speculations which unite it to astronomy, and the electrological which border upon chemistry.

The Chemical.

As for Chemistry, considered separately, it relates to so intimate and complete a mode of inorganic existence, that it has been found difficult to separate it from the organic. The phenomena of various substances present differences which are not reducible, as in the physical case, to inequalities of degree; and here we find fully developed the tendency of phenomena to become susceptible of modification in proportion to their complexity and increasing speciality. That tendency, it is true, showed itself in physics, so as to originate the art of experimentation; but it is far more complete in chemistry, inasmuch as it extends to molecular composition itself: and as such modification could not take place in vital cases without being liable to suspend or suppress phenomena of greater delicacy, chemistry will be always, and more and more, the chief basis of our material power. In a speculative view, chemistry is of extreme scientific importance, as revealing the most intimate mode of inorganic existence, and as completing our knowledge of the general medium in its direct influence on the organism; thus being, with physics, but in a more marked way, the link between inorganic and organic speculation. In regard to interconnection, too, it is so superior to physics as to approach very near to biology: and from biology it will, no doubt, hereafter derive some of the collective spirit in which, with physics, it is now very deficient. I have before pointed out the comparative method and the taxonomical theory as probable agencies for perfecting chemical speculation in this way. Here then we find the limit of the ascendency of the analytical system, and the natural beginning of that of the synthetical. Meantime, the science is remarkably open to abusive encroachment, and to spoliation by dispersive treatment. It requires protection from encroachment, not only from mathematics, from which physics in a certain degree protects it, but from physics itself. As some scientific men see in physics only geometry and mechanics, others see in the best marked phenomena of chemistry nothing more than physical effects; a mistake the more hostile to chemical progression, that it rests in part upon the incontestable affinity of the two sciences. But whatever may be the logical and scientific imperfection of chemistry, in which prevision is scarcely possible in even secondary particulars, the sense of natural law, extended to the most complex phenomena of inorganic existence, is not the less strikingly and permanently developed. Thus then we survey as a whole the preparatory science

of dead nature, from its astronomical beginning to its chemical conclusion, with physics for the link between the two.

Till biological science arose, the logical evolution required that the human mind should be occupied with inorganic The Biological science, which, from its superior simplicity, must constitute the basis of knowledge, from which alone rational positivity could arise; and till the positive spirit was extended to social phenomena, biology could not but suffer from the disturbance introduced into it from the anterior sciences. Biologists then have every reason to be grateful to sociology, as a protecting influence against the oppressive, though antagonistic pretensions of the physicists and the metaphysicians. Organic science marks out its own division into two parts, the science of individual and of collective life but human considerations are preponderant in both; and, while sociology is based on biology, it reacts upon it first learning from it to understand the agent of its own phenomena, and then ascertaining the social medium, and exhibiting the course of human progression. The great misfortune of biology has been that, because its phenomena partake largely of the characteristics of the foregoing sciences, it has been extremely difficult to ascertain the nature and extent of the vast accession to material existence which takes place on the institution of vitality, and therefore to introduce the positive spirit into this order of researches. The theological or metaphysical spirit seemed for long the only protection against the intrusion of the inorganic spirit; and how such protection must compromise the scientific spirit, I need not stop to prove. The situation produced by the necessary resistance of modern reason to the old system was curiously exemplified by the opposition of biological doctrine to obvious facts, as in the case of Descartes' theory of the automatism of brutes, which held its ground for above a century, and was in some degree adopted by Buffon himself, though his own contemplations must have shown him its absurdity. He was sensible of the danger of mathematical usurpation in science; but he preferred it to theologico-metaphysical tutelage, which was then the only alternative. We have seen how the difficulty was solved by Bichat's two great conceptions; the one, physiological and dynamical, distinguishing the organic or vegetative from the animal life, a distinction which forms the basis of sound biological philosophy; and the other, anatomical and statical, the great theory of elementary tissues, which is in biology the philosophical equivalent of the molecular theory in physicochemistry. This statical conception is contributory to the dynamical by enabling us to assign a special seat to each of the two kinds of life. Bichat did not contemplate the extension of his theory beyond man but, confined to the most complex case, it could never have become really rational. We owe the power of extending it, and therefore of establishing the rationality of the science, to the

CICA

THE BIOLOGICAL ELEMENT.

453

comparative method, which discloses to us the gradual succession of the degrees of organization or life. Lamarck, Oken, and De Blainville have given us possession of this chief logical instrument of the science, which is also the preponderant idea of all lofty biological contemplation, because the anatomical and physiological aspects there coalesce with the taxonomical. The consideration of the medium was once everything: but here the consideration of the organism rises more and more through the long series of vital systems of growing complexity. Ideas of order and harmony were originated by inorganic studies; but their highest manifestation, in the form of classification and a hierarchy, could issue only from biological science, whence it was to extend to social science. At present, little more is done in biology than assigning the position of its different questions; and the chasms between them are many and wide but the science has assumed its due character of generality in the hands of its most eminent interpreters; and its scientific constitution is as rational as that of any of its predecessors: but that it is not yet complete is proved by the continuance of the controversy between the theologico-metaphysical school on the one hand, and the physico-chemical school on the other, and by the difficulties still encountered by the great conception of vital spontaneity being developed, in determinate degrees, within the limits of the laws of universal existence. One remedy will be found in such an education as will enable biologists to apply the truths of other sciences to their own, without admitting intrusion from either restricted science or false philosophy: but the intervention of sociology is also necessary, the last biological degree, the intellectual and moral life, bordering so closely as it does upon the social. The smallness of the results yet obtained from the admirable conception of Gall is owing to the insufficiency of the individual, that is, the biological, view of Man: and the best conceptions of the science can never acquire complete efficacy, or even stability, till they are attached to the basis of social science. Thus only can they be safe from the prolonged dominion of the old philosophy on the one hand, and from the usurpations of the mathematical spirit on the other, in the physico-chemical form; and thus alone can the same conception, in biology as in social science, fulfil the conditions at once of order and of progress.

The accession of real existence then, occasioned by its extension from the individual to the collective organism, is the

The Socio

originating cause of the only science which can be logical. final. If the definitive complexity is of a different kind from the three preceding, it is quite as indisputable. It is as evident as the implication of the mathematical with the physical; the physical with the chemical; and the chemical with the biological and it also accords with the decreasing generality of successive phenomena. The continuous expansion and almost indefi

nite perpetuity which characterize the social organism separate this case widely from the biological, though their elements are necessarily homogeneous; and the separation will be the more indisputable, if we take into the account, as we are scientifically bound to do, the whole of the human race, instead of the portion whose history we have explored. In a logical view, we have seen that individual investigation would not yield us the method of filiation: and in a scientific view, it is equally clear that the knowledge of the laws of individual life can never enable us to make deductions of successive social phenomena; for each stage is deducible only from the one immediately preceding, though the aggregate must be in agreement with the system of biological ideas. While this separation is indispensable, it appears to constitute the chief difficulty, logical and scientific, of the most advanced minds, on account of the tendency of the earlier sciences to absorb the later, in virtue of their earlier positivity and their natural relations; tendencies so specious in this most recent case as to have ensnared almost every eminent thinker of our age. By the establishment of sociology we now witness the systematic fulfilment of the eternal conditions of the originality and pre-eminence of social speculations, which theology and metaphysics have instinctively struggled to maintain, though very insufficiently since the positive method began to prevail more and more in the modern mental evolution. In the name of positivism and rationality we have demanded and reconstructed the philosophical ascendency of social speculation, by undoing the work of the theological and metaphysical schools, which strove to isolate moral and political research from that system of natural philosophy with which we have now incorporated it. We see that the coalescing logical and scientific needs prescribe the subordination of this final science to all the rest, over which it then becomes preponderant by its philosophical reaction. This is the ground of my anxiety to point out the direct relations which result from the nature of the respective studies, on account of the constant necessity of the preparatory knowledge of the medium of the social evolution on the one hand, and the agent on the other. The place assigned to sociology in the encyclopedical scale is thus confirmed on all possible occasions, apart from the logical obligation to raise the positive method, by this successive procedure, to the sociological phase. But, whatever may be the importance of the ideas communicated by the inorganic sciences to sociology, the scientific office must especially belong to biology, which, from the nature of the subjects concerned, must always furnish the fundamental ideas that must guide sociological research; and often even rectify or improve the results. Moreover, it is biology which presents to us the domestic state, intermediate between individual and social existence, which is more or less common to all the superior animals, and which is, in our species, the true primitive basis of the more

INVESTIGATION AND STATEMENT.

455 vast collective organism. However, the first elaboration of this new science could not but be essentially dynamical; so that the laws of harmony have nearly throughout been implicitly considered among the laws of succession, in which alone social physics can at present consist. The scientific link between biology and sociology is the connection of their two series, by which the second may be regarded as the prolongation of the first, though the terms of the one may be successive, and of the other coexisting. With this difference, we find that the essential character of the human evolution results from the growing power of the superior attributes which place Man at the head of the animal hierarchy, where they also enable us to assign the chief degrees of animality. Thus we see the vast organic system really connecting the humblest vegetative existence with the noblest social life through a long succession, which, if necessarily discontinuous, is not the less essentially homogeneous. And, in as far as the principle of such a connection consists in the decreasing generality of the chief phenomena, this double organic series is connected with the rudimentary inorganic, the interior succession of which is determined by the same principle. The necessary direction of the human movement being thus ascertained, the only remaining task, in constituting sociology, was to mark out its general course. This was done by my ascertaining the law of evolution, which in connection with the hierarchical law, establishes a true philosophical system, the two chief elements of which are absolutely interconnected. In this dynamical conception, sociology is radically connected with biology, since the original state of humanity essentially coincides with that in which the superior animals are detained by their organic imperfection,their speculative ability never transcending the primitive fetichism from which man could not have issued but for the strong impulsion of the collective development. The resemblance is yet stronger in the practical aspect. The sociological theory being thus constituted, nothing remained but to put it to the proof by an historical application of it to the intellectual and social progression of the most advanced portion of the human race through forty centuries. This test has discredited all the historical conceptions proposed before, and has shown the reality of the theory by explaining and estimating each phase as it passed in review, so as to enable us to do honour to the services of the most opposite influences, as in the case of the polytheistic and monotheistic states. A political and philosophical preparation like this was necessary to emancipate the mind of the inquirer from the old philosophy and critical prejudices, and to substitute for them the scientific condition of mind which is indispensable for the humblest speculations, but far more necessary, and at the same time more difficult, in the case of the most transcendent and the most impassioned researches that the human mind can undertake. Thus the same conditions which