departments of Thought, on the other, and set these three Sciences apart
as the Exact or Infallible ones, occupying a rank superior to the
others, by virtue of the Certainty and Exactitude with which we are
able, through the operation of the true Deductive Method, to ascertain
their Principles and Phenomena. We shall then be enabled--by the aid of
Comte's principle that the domains of investigation take rank in
proportion to the complexity of their Phenomena--to ascertain, after a
very brief examination, the place which History holds in the Scale, and
how much claim it can lay to a Scientific character.

Comte closes the Hierarchy of the Positive Sciences by adding to the
three which we have denominated _Exact_ Sciences, Chemistry, Biology,
Sociology, and _La Morale_, in the order in which they are named, as
indicated by the nature of the Phenomena with which they are concerned.
If we adopt this arrangement, and annex to each of these _general_
Sciences, as they are called in the language of Positivism, its derived
or dependent branches, we shall have the following order: Chemistry;
Geology; Biology, including Botany, Human and Comparative Anatomy, and
Physiology; Zoology; Sociology; and _La Morale_. Although this enlarged
scale is defective, many important departments, such as Ethnology,
Philology, etc., being left out, it is sufficiently correct to show the
complex nature of the Phenomena with which History must concern itself.

History--in its largest aspect, that in which we are now considering
it--is the record of the progress of the Race in all its various modes
of development. In it is therefore involved the examination and
consideration of all the agencies, Material or Spiritual, which have
operated on Mankind through past ages. Mathematical questions concerning
Number, Form, and Force; Astronomical problems on the relation of our
Earth to other Celestial bodies, and the effect thereof on Climate,