Comte's
theory, and amply exemplified in the details of his work. When he
affirms that one science historically precedes another, he does not mean
that the perfection of the first precedes the humblest commencement of
those which follow. Mr Spencer does not distinguish between the
empirical stage of the cultivation of a branch of knowledge, and the
scientific stage. The commencement of every study consists in gathering
together unanalyzed facts, and treasuring up such spontaneous
generalizations as present themselves to natural sagacity. In this stage
any branch of inquiry can be carried on independently of every other;
and it is one of M. Comte's own remarks that the most complex, in a
scientific point of view, of all studies, the latest in his series, the
study of man as a moral and social being, since from its absorbing
interest it is cultivated more or less by every one, and pre-eminently
by the great practical minds, acquired at an early period a greater
stock of just though unscientific observations than the more elementary
sciences. It is these empirical truths that the later and more special
sciences lend to the earlier; or, at most, some extremely elementary
scientific truth, which happening to be easily ascertainable by direct
experiment, could be made available for carrying a previous science
already founded, to a higher stage of development; a re-action of the
later sciences on the earlier which M.
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