Vols. iii. and iv. of the Abstract Encyclopæ Physics and Chemistry, reserved for cessors. Such are the indications, logical and scientific, which I was bound to place here in order to complete my earlier treatment dia, treating of the second step in the abstract encyclopædia. The primary pair of cosmological sciences thus adequately organised, I need not linger on the couple which forms the transition from the lower objects of contemplation to the higher domain. For in the first volume of this work, the systematisation of Physics and Chemistry has been set forth as far as is possible in the present state of the Positive reconstruction, whilst at the same time the conditions yet to be met are pointed out. In accordance with the fifteenth law of the First Philosophy, the intermediate couple is the least near its regeneration, to effect which will need the concurrence of the two others. I must leave, then, to my successors, the definitive execution of the third and fourth volumes of the Second Philosophy, simply pointing out the seven chapters into which each is to be divided. The third volume. Physics. The fourth volume. For Physics, the religious introduction will explain the purely subjective unity attainable in the case of a science, the branches of which must always be objectively independent, notwithstanding that they subserve in common the study of the general constitution of inorganic matter as existing on the earth. The order of the seven chapters and their contents will be next determined by the senses to which they relate, ranked by their increasing speciality, a principle of arrangement which is in conformity with the gradual transition between Astronomy and Chemistry. Barology comes first, then the study of Gustation in the abstract, when founded; then Thermology, followed by the theory of Smell, Optics, Acoustics, and Electrology. As for Chemistry, it is a science which admits of a more Chemistry. satisfactory coordination; since, being of narrower extent, it is susceptible of a definition in the fullest sense synthetical, a definition already given in my fundamental work. The introp. 19, 1st ed. duction will first set forth the science as a whole, and it will Phil. Pos. iii. then be possible to effect its definitive systematisation in the seven chapters of the volume devoted to it, assuming that sufficient preparation has been made by the elaboration indicated in the first volume of the present work. The seven chapters will organise the study of the elements; the chemical examination of the earth's environment; the theory of the simplest compounds; the theory of the second and most im portant degree of composition; the general laws of combination; the examination of the third degree; lastly, the complement relating to substances of unstable composition. It is in this intermediate couple that the institution of subjective milieus, systematised by Positivism on the basis of its rudimentary form in Mathematics, will most fully display its efficiency as an intellectual instrument, not that it may not be extended also to the province of life. So adapted is it to geometry and even to mechanics, that its peculiar mode in those studies came in spontaneously, neither the scientific education of the individual or the race permitting us to trace the formation in the brain of the idea of space. It is in the physico-chemical domain, however, that the institution finds its widest field in consequence of the greater variety of the phenomena there observed, each class of which requires a milieu suited to its abstract study, a milieu but imperfectly indicated by the original type. Having thus set forth sufficiently the definitive systema- Biology. tisation of the existence common to all bodies, in its three stages, mathematical, physical, and chemical, I must now enter on the special sphere of unity, and so on Biology as a preparation for it. In my first volume I worked out the systematic study of vitality more fully than any other part of natural philosophy. I carried its organisation so far as to give separately each of the forty lessons, which, in the general plan of Positive education, are devoted to Biology. Notwithstanding this, the fifth volume of the abstract encyclopædia must here receive fuller explanations than any of its predecessors, in order to give its true character to a systematisation of equal difficulty and urgency by drawing out into special prominence the necessary connection of Biology with the religion of Humanity. The slight attention gained, these three years past, by the capital conceptions I put forward on the immediate reconstruction of Biology, is but one more proof how impossible it is to give any science its systematic form, if we isolate it from the whole of the doctrine. Never would the theory of life be disengaged from the analytical regime which is destroying it, were not a social impulse to secure its due submission to the discipline of synthesis. Referring to the treatment of Biology in my first volume, The fifth the Abstract volume of Encyclopæ dia. Biology. from Biology jects: the theory of Unity, and Elimination I am bound in the first place to point out a definitive eliminaof two sub- tion which will place it in a better light. The systematisation of Biology stood there between two expositions essentially alien the Cerebral to the fifth encyclopædic phase, but for which I could not then find another place and yet which I needed for the exposition of Sociology. Both really concern the ultimate science, the one for the theory of unity, the other for the synthesis of the cerebral functions. Synthesis. With this elimination the extent of Biology not dispro portioned to that of Cos mology. The introduction to the fifth volume. Assume these two episodes transferred to their proper place, and it will be seen that in the Introductory Principles, Biology is not treated on a scale disproportioned to that of Cosmology. If this is allowed, a few systematic considerations are all that is needed here to complete the work then done, and their aim will be to mark more strongly the dependence subjectively of the vital order on the human order. We cannot do this better than by stating the object and the connection of the seven chapters into which the fifth volume of the Second Philosophy is to be divided. In its religious introduction, the first point will be to show the greatness of the step taken by the intellect, when it passes from the inorganic world to the world of life. So disconnected is mere material existence that the corpuscular theory is necessary to determine in Cosmology what is the proper field of abstraction, abstraction there always relating to molecules even whilst studying masses. In Biology, on the contrary, we enter the domain of unity, the unity of simple nutrition in the first place, then the unity of action and sensation, in the case of beings, whose characteristic is a permanent consensus, which allows analysis only as the preparation for synthesis. A law, as indisputable as it is inexplicable, connects, in all cases without exception, this contrast between independence and concert with the opposition between fixity of composition and renewal of the material substance. Thus is established the great primary dualism of relative philosophy; the preparation for which is the dualism introduced by the absolute philosophy, when it separated, as early as the Fetichist period, the external order from the human. This instinctive division, which drew no distinction between vitality and materiality, was destined under Theologism, concentrated as it was on Humanity, to serve as guide to Positive science in its gradual ascent, from its first step in Mathematics to its final terminus in Morals. By giving over to Positive science the province of life, it impelled it towards the study of man, only separate from that of life when we take into account the succession of the several degrees of unity. Biology is amble to Humanity. but the pre the study of Hence its In this way, the religious introduction of the biological volume makes us feel the strictly preparatory object of the science, a point more appreciable the nearer we get to the goal of our theoretic efforts, which alone allows a true synthesis, all limits. partial syntheses being futile. As preparatory, the study of life in the strict sense tends to be limited to the preamble required for the systematic appreciation of Humanity. All the great problems as to Unity can be stated only in an inchoate form in Biology, as their solution depends above all on the functions of the brain, the essential sources of the consensus, which is but imperfectly perceptible till we reach the ultimate domain, or Morals. a We are thus led to condense Biology in seven chapters, the two first of which organise its statical basis, anatomical in the first place, then taxonomical; the others being all devoted to its dynamical portion. The biotomical chapter gives, in systematic form and in succession, the three normal stages of statical analysis; it treats, that is, of the elements, tissues, and organs, thus completing duly the fundamental conception of Bichat. Leaving molecular questions to Cosmology, Biology must yet begin with the study of the elements, in order to gain a right understanding of the harmony between the solids and the fluids, since the fluids can contain nothing but the rudiments of the solids. Taxonomy. The second chapter arranges the hierarchy of life with the chap. II. view of linking Vegetality, properly so called, to Humanity, through the series of degrees admissible for Animality. Scientifically viewed, the scale so formed gives at once the succession of independent barriers which separate man from the inorganic world, and the series of intermedia which transmit to us the action of that world. Logically viewed, it throws light upon the analysis of life by fixing all its modes in beings which present them isolated from the higher degrees, and it allows biological synthesis to follow throughout the series the modifications of the unity originally expressed in man as its supreme type. These two uses of the scale of life admit, nay, demand a subjective conception of that scale, in which we put aside on system unpropitious cases, whilst we introduce such imagirary organisms as VOL. IV. Dynamical IV. Laws of vegetal and animal life. may facilitate our transitions and our comparisons. This done, the vital series becomes unassailable, and connects equally with the progression traced in the material order and the evolution of man, whilst it secures the continuity of the Second Philosophy in obedience to the law of classification which it derives from the First. With this preparation, dynamical Biology is condensed in Chaps. III. five chapters, in which animality is distinguished from vegetality, in accordance with the mode of alimentation, for in animal life the materials of nutrition must be elaborated in lower organisms if they are to be adapted to the higher. The third chapter of the fifth volume of the abstract encyclopædia must be devoted, then, to the three fundamental laws of vegetative or organic life, to the study, that is, of renewal, of developement, and lastly of reproduction. The next chapter proceeds from this point to an equivalent treatment of animal life, by examining in succession the laws of exercise, habit, and improvement. Chap. V. mission. Chap. VI. The complement of these two groups of vital laws must ditary trans- be given by their connection, the proper subject of the fifth chapter, where the seventh law, the special law of hereditary transmission, combines the functions of nutrition which are unintermittent with the functions of activity which are intermittent. We are thus enabled in the sixth chapter to examine between the directly the relations which necessarily exist between the organism and its environment, which relations are the permanent sources of the modifications of either. As the result of this, the whole preparatory process issues, in the seventh chapter, in the general study of vital modificability, and we base this study on the third law of the First Philosophy, the law which connects all variations whatever, even the variations of disease, with the normal state. organism and the environment. Chap. VII. Vital modificability. Synthetic conclusion of the fifth volume. Logical ap preciation of This construction of the abstract theory of life is summarised in the synthetic conclusion of the volume, which states the grand results of the biological treatise, and forms the direct introduction to the Sociological volume. Under its logical aspect, the treatise Biology, as the highest portion of natural philosophy, gives completeness to the relativity originated by the lowest portion, and developed in the intermediate sciences, the ultimate object being to form the basis for moral philosophy. Summed up in the movement of the earth and the gravitation of the planetary system, the astronomical synthesis is a preparation for the rela on Biology. |