that is, phenomenology, and, moreover, theoretical grammar, and æsthetics, as also falling within its province. The will and the conscience of individuals combining in human communities so as to become public will and public consciousness, and the laws relating to the same, are the objects of sociology or social science, which may be further distinguished into ethics, political economy, the philosophy of law and civil society, and politics. To philosophy, finally, is reserved the task of demonstrating the connection of the several sciences and their possible union into one single and universal science, becoming thus the very crown of knowledge, by placing before us all the relations possible in the universe. Owing to its vast scope and boundless range, philosophy exhibits, according to the point of view from which it is considered, the most various aspects. In pursuit of its practical functions, in illustrating the value of science in the realm of human ends, it is the embodiment of the general intuition of the world. In establishing theoretically the connection of the sciences it stands forth as their connecting link and very climax. As a teacher, it acquaints us with the methods, order, and means by which science is constructed and evolved. And precisely as philosophy, applied to the subjects of descriptive knowledge, can be considered as divided up into several sciences, the general doctrine of method can also be imagined as being split up into separate methods for each separate branch of science, the relations between these distinct methods being identical with the relations of the several sciences to each other. One way, therefore, of determining the nature of a science is to define its method. Hence, in attempting to accurately define the character of the philosophy of law and civil society, the science which considers the laws of nature in relation to human laws and institutions, we find it to be indispensable first to enter into an investigation of the method by which this result is to be achieved. TABLE OF THE DIVISIONS OF SCIENCE, PURE, CONCRETE, DESCRIPTIVE, AND APPLIED. C. Astronomy. C. Descriptive (Experimental) C. Navigation. Crystallogra phy. Geology. PhysicalGeo graphy. Physical Science and D. Pathology. Applied Mecha Anthropology. Morphology. F. Philosophy of History. Statistics. Philosophy. Fine Arts. F. Political Geography. History of Nations. History of Law. Positive Jurisprudence. F. Commerce. State Adminis- Legal Practice. Scientific Inquiry. CHAPTER II. METHOD. § 11. METHOD points out the course to be pursued by the mind in order to attain a solution of the problems presented to it. Method is called scientific when employed for the purpose of ascertaining truth, a result which can be obtained solely by observing the real, and by establishing the pertinence of phenomena by means of inference. Both observation and inference, however, may be right or wrong. Method, therefore, in order to insure proper results, must provide safeguards against error, and these can only be found in those mental operations which exercise a control over our observation and reasoning. Scientific method, as thus explained, consists accordingly in the totality of those mental instruments by means of which we acquire, order, define and augment our knowledge, or, in other words, construct science. § 12. It is evident that these mental aids keep ever increasing with the development of science, and that thus the latter becomes the means of furthering its own progress. The progress of thought, whilst continually accommodating itself to the mass of knowledge already acquired, undergoes constant changes both as to its point of departure and as to its objects and results. First, it gropes about in search of an appropriate way of proceeding, later, it lays its hands upon accurate and well-defined conceptions, until, in the determination of the connection between the latter, the judgment, in proportion to the greater extent of reviewable matter, is at last enabled to occupy a more elevated point of view. A keener insight into one science enables us to fathom the unexplored recesses of another; heightened intensity is sure to follow every growth of the subject-matter of science, and method is more or less perfect in proportion to the larger or smaller number of accurate data at its disposal. Knowledge, growing more precise, enables us to distinguish phenomena which before seemed confused and entangled, and to add, at the same time, to our stock of observations. Gaining thus in breadth, knowledge demands a re-ordering, and when embraced in a system and discovered to be erroneous or deficient in some of its parts, calls for further correction and completion. Its circle reopens and widens with every fresh enlargement of its diameter. Method is, in this sense, identical with the progress of science, and as a corollary, science may in its turn be said to be the embodiment of method. Hence there are as many special methods as distinct sciences, and again as many as there are stages of development through which each particular science has passed. These separate methods, however, may be reduced to a general method, seeing that phenomena are inter-dependent, that human faculties harmonize with each other, and that science in its totality is homogeneous. But just as every science merged into one single and perfected science mirroring the universe would lose its special characteristics, so would the method applicable to the latter be of a nature quite different from those employed about sciences in course of formation. That ideally perfect knowledge, and that faultlessly complete consciousness, which would behold the universe in its unity and the network of all its relations in its total connection, would be independent of all reasoning, for a single glance at any one atom of the whole would then be sufficient for the simultaneous comprehension of every other of its moments. In proportion as the several sciences are gradually drawing nearer to the ideal standardalthough necessarily divided from it for ever by an un INTUITION; OBSERVATION. 45 fathomable distance the results achieved by them. emancipate themselves from the methods pursued in their development; for truth, obtain it by whatever means we may, always remains one and the same, and the greater the number of its ascertained relations, the greater will be the variety of methods whereby it can be demonstrated. The question of method rises therefore in importance, the less developed the science is, to which it is to be applied, and the more intricate and the more concrete the elements entering into the problem to be solved appear to be. § 13. It is therefore obvious that, with regard to our most elementary knowledge, the part played by method is most insignificant and almost identical with its function. in relation to perfect ideal consciousness stated above. The most universal and indubitable conceptions embodying our simplest and most general experiences, -as those of quantity and quality, of identity and difference, of time and of space, or rather of extent and of succession, of force and of relation, in other words, the notions of cause and of effect, all results of the most primitive and and ever-recurring observations,-have become such essential component elements of the human mind, have formed so invariably a part of our past experience, and are so indispensable a condition to all future experience, that we are now unable to conceive of them otherwise than as absolute knowledge, nor in any other way than by way of intuition. Observation and inference, the constituent elements of every method, do not part company yet in objective logic. S 14. Every method, in fact, consists of such a combination of the various phases of these two modes of proceeding as enables us to obtain reliable results. Observation supplies us with our matter: the knowledge of phenomena, and again and again repeated by us leads to experience. This is followed almost unconsciously by the first comparison, abstraction, and generalization, by the co-ordination of isolated facts, the substitution of |