theoretically or practically? Science is nothing else but organised knowledge. Fact-collectors do not seem even to be blessed with a hint of its being so, but go on with their search after the weary, weary a, and the barren, barren b, as if a knowledge of these letters, and not of their relation to other letters, was desirable as an end in itself. Houses are made of bricks; but no mere accumulation of bricks makes a house. On the contrary, too many bricks may take up the soil on which the house is to be built, and have, therefore, to be removed. No wonder Specialists-and Scientists are nothing if not Specialists-object to the systematising of knowledge; it renders their pursuits so petty and contemptible. Moreover, systematising demands large minds and social convictions, and Scientists-such is our experience-rarely have either, and never both; they cease to be Scientists if they do.

One whom Comte called the greatest genius of the eighteenth century-Diderot-a man of comprehensive mind and general views, who possessed also such quantities of knowledge of all things (being editor of the Encyclopædie) as few possessed in his day, wrote as follows: "When we compare the infinite multitude of the phenomena of nature with the limits of our understandings and the weakness of our organs, can we ever expect anything else from the slowness of our work, from the long and frequent interruptions, and from the rarity of creative genius, than a few broken and separated pieces of the great chain that binds all things together? Experimental philosophy might work for centuries of centuries, and the materials that it had heaped up, finally reaching in their number beyond all combination, would still be far removed from an exact numeration. How many volumes would it not need to contain the mere terms by which we should designate the distinct collections of phenomena, if the phenomena were known? When will the philosophic language be complete? If it were complete, who among men would be able to know it? If the Eternal, to manifest his power still more plainly than by the marvels of nature, had deigned to develop the universal mechanism on pages traced by his own hand, do you suppose that this great book would be more comprehensible to us than the universe itself? How many pages of it all would have been intelligible to the philosopher who, with all the force of head that had been conferred upon him, was not sure of having grasped all the conclusions by which

an old geometer determined the relation of the sphere to the cylinder? We should have in such pages a fairly good measure of the reach of men's minds, and a still more pungent satire on our vanity. We should say Fermat went to such a page, Archimedes went a few pages further.

"What, then, is our end? The execution of a work that can never be achieved, and which would be far beyond human intelligence if it were achieved. Are we not more insensate than the first inhabitants of the plain of Shinar? We know the immeasurable distance between the earth and the heavens, and still we insist on rearing our tower. But can we presume that there will come a time when our pride will abandon the work in discouragement? What appearance is there that, narrowly lodged and ill at its ease here below, our pride should obstinately persist in constructing an uninhabitable palace beyond the earth's atmosphere? Even if it should so insist, would it not be arrested by the confusion of tongues, which is already only too perceptible and too inconvenient in natural history? Besides, it is utility that circumscribes all. It will be utility that in a few centuries will set bounds to experimental physics, as it is on the eve of setting bounds to geometry. I grant centurics to this study, because the sphere of its utility is infinitely more extensive than that of abstract science; and it is without contradiction the base of our real knowledge." (Diderot's "Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature.")

Again; "Since the reason cannot understand everything, imagination foresee everything, sense observe everything, nor memory retain everything; since great men are born at such remote intervals, and the progress of science is so interrupted by revolution, that whole ages of study are passed in recovering the knowledge of the centuries that are gone, to observe everything in nature without distinction is to fail in duty to the human race. Men who are beyond the common run in their talents ought to respect themselves and posterity in the employment of their time. What would posterity think of us if we had nothing to transmit to it save a complete insectology, an immense history of microscopic animals? No; to the great geniuses great objects, little objects to the little geniuses." (Diderot's 'Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature," sec. 54)

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Precisely; let us leave to the "little geniuses" "little objects," the discovery of a new salt, the observation of the markings on a Diatom, and the determining whether man

and the ape have or have not a Hippocampus Minor. General views rarely or never come from Scientists. It is a fact that science owes more to men of wide and varied culture than to any Specialist, however important his speciality.

Mr. Frederic Harrison has also some pungent observations to the same purpose. He writes: "That order is the ultimate destiny of all our knowledge is so obvious that the effort to found it at once can be met only by one objection worthy of an answer, and that is that the aim is premature. It is very easy to see that the earlier attempts, when even astronomy was incomplete, and the moral sciences outside the pale of law, were utterly premature. But whether the task is premature now is entirely different. After all, it is one of those questions which no à priori argument can affect. It is not premature if it can be even approximately done. Yet the mere suggestion of it arouses a myriad-headed opposition. In every science and every sub-section of a science a Specialist starts forth to tell us that generations of observers are needed to exhaust even his own particular corner in the field of knowledge. And if one science is to become but the instrument of another, if one kind of inquiry is to be subordinate to another, we should fetter, they tell us, the freedom which has led to so many brilliant discoveries, and leave unsolved many a curious problem.

"If the systematising of knowledge will be premature before all this is accomplished, it will always be premature. The end for which we are to wait is one utterly chimerical. No doubt there are no bounds to knowledge, any more than there are bounds to the universe. As Aristotle says, thus one would go on for ever without result; so that the search would be fruitless and vain. Nay, if we go by quantity, estimate our knowledge now as compared with the facts of the universe, we are but children still playing on the shore of an infinite sea........ A life of toil may be baffled by the problems to be found in one drop of turbid water. Ten generations of thinkers might perish before they had succeeded in explaining all that is conceivable science might detect on a withered leaf. And whole academies of historians would not suffice fully to raise the veil that shrouds a single human life.

"Were science pursued indefinitely on this scale, not only would the earth not contain all the books that should be

written, but no conceivable brain could grasp, much less organise, the infinite maze. The task of organisation would thus be made more hopeless each day, and philosophy would be as helpless as Xerxes in the midst of his countless hosts. The radical difference between the positive and the current philosophy, that which feeds the internecine conflict between them, is that between the relative and the absolute. Looked at from the absolute point of view-that is, as the phenomena of matter and life present themselves from without— the task of exhausting the knowledge of them is truly infinite, and that of systematising them is truly hopeless. From the relative point of view, philosophy is called on to exist, not for its own sake, but as the immediate minister of life. To utilise it, and to organise it in order to utilise it, is of far higher importance than to extend it. It judges the value of truths, not by the degree of intellectual brilliancy they exhibit, or the delight they afford to the imagination, but by their relation, in a broad sense, to the problem of human happiness."

Milton has nobly indicated what knowledge is of most use to man: "That which before us lies in daily life-that is the prime wisdom." Specialism has rendered one service -a quite unintentional one, as might be expected-that of deepening our belief that art is long and life fleeting. It being so, it behoves us to ask not only what can be known, but how it can be best known. A knowledge of the fundamental relations and inter-relations of the sciences is necessary for disciplining the intellect and conduct of man. How can such knowledge be attained? Who is competent to give it? Now let us hear Comte.

"Natural philosophy," says Comte, " ....... as distinct from social philosophy, which it precedes and prepares, is composed of two great sciences, Cosmology and Biologyterms which render the contrast between them more distinct.

"This point settled, we have now to determine the order in which the study of the world and the study of life-the two-fold basis of the great final study, that of Humanityshould succeed each other. First, however, it will be well to point out the essential harmony which exists between these two sets of introductory principles: the one being general, and indirectly related to the main subject; the other special, and related to it directly.

"Neither the natural distinction between these two sciences nor the necessity of their co-existence has as yet

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