642). Among these "essential inclinations" he
includes not only our "instinctive predilection for order and harmony,"
which makes us relish any conception, even fictitious, that helps to
reduce phaenomena to system; but even our feelings of taste, "les
convenances purement esthetiques," which, he says, have a legitimate
part in the employment of the "genre de liberte" reste facultatif pour
notre intelligence." After the due satisfaction of our "most eminent
mental inclinations," there will still remain "a considerable margin of
indeterminateness, which should be made use of to give a direct
gratification to our _besoin_ of ideality, by embellishing our
scientific thoughts, without injury to their essential reality" (vi.
647). In consistency with all this, M. Comte warns thinkers against too
severe a scrutiny of the exact truth of scientific laws, and stamps with
"severe reprobation" those who break down "by too minute an
investigation" generalizations already made, without being able to
substitute others (vi. 639): as in the case of Lavoisier's general
theory of chemistry, which would have made that science more
satisfactory than at present to "the instinctive inclinations of our
intelligence" if it had turned out true, but unhappily it did not.
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