proof which are to be put in practice in the more elevated. No intellect
is properly qualified for the higher part of the scale, without due
practice in the lower.

Mr Herbert Spencer, in his essay entitled "The Genesis of Science," and
more recently in a pamphlet on "the Classification of the Sciences," has
criticised and condemned M. Comte's classification, and proposed a more
elaborate one of his own: and M. Littré, in his valuable biographical
and philosophical work on M. Comte ("Auguste Comte et la Philosophie
Positive"), has at some length criticised the criticism. Mr Spencer is
one of the small number of persons who by the solidity and
encyclopedical character of their knowledge, and their power of
co-ordination and concatenation, may claim to be the peers of M. Comte,
and entitled to a vote in the estimation of him. But after giving to his
animadversions the respectful attention due to all that comes from Mr
Spencer, we cannot find that he has made out any case. It is always easy
to find fault with a classification. There are a hundred possible ways
of arranging any set of objects, and something may almost always be said
against the best, and in favour of the worst of them. But the merits of
a classification depend on the purposes to which it is instrumental. We
have shown the purposes for which M. Comte's classification is intended.
Mr Spencer has not shown that it is ill adapted to those purposes: and
we cannot perceive that his own answers any ends equally important. His
chief objection is that if the more special sciences need the truths of
the more general ones, the latter also need some of those of the former,
and have at times been stopped in their progress by the imperfect state
of sciences which follow long after them in M. Comte's scale; so that,
the dependence being mutual, there is a _consensus_, but not an
ascending scale or hierarchy of the sciences. That the earlier sciences
derive help from the later is undoubtedly true; it is part of M. Comte's