Quite in harmony with this position we find to be the admissions that the sciences are as branches of one trunk, and that they were at first cultivated simultaneously; and this harmony becomes the more marked on finding, as we have done, not only that the sciences have a common root, but that science in general has a common root with language, classification, reasoning, art; that throughout civilisation these have advanced together, acting and reacting upon each other just as the separate sciences have done; and that thus the development of intelligence in all its divisions and subdivisions has conformed to this same law which we have shown that the sciences conform to.  From all which we may perceive that the sciences can with no greater propriety be arranged in a succession, than language, classification, reasoning, art, and science, can be arranged in a succession; that, however needful a succession may be for the convenience of books and catalogues, it must be recognised merely as a convention; and that so far from its being the function of a philosophy of the sciences to establish a hierarchy, it is its function to show that the linear arrangements required for literary purposes, have none of them any basis either in Nature or History.

There is one further remark we must not omit—­a remark touching the importance of the question that has been discussed.  Unfortunately it commonly happens that topics of this abstract nature are slighted as of no practical moment; and, we doubt not, that many will think it of very little consequence what theory respecting the genesis of science may be entertained.  But the value of truths is often great, in proportion as their generality is wide.  Remote as they seem from practical application, the highest generalisations are not unfrequently the most potent in their effects, in virtue of their influence on all those subordinate generalisations which regulate practice.  And it must be so here.  Whenever established, a correct theory of the historical development of the sciences must have an immense effect upon education; and, through education, upon civilisation.  Greatly as we differ from him in other respects, we agree with M. Comte in the belief that, rightly conducted, the education of the individual must have a certain correspondence with the evolution of the race.

No one can contemplate the facts we have cited in illustration of the early stages of science, without recognising the necessity of the processes through which those stages were reached—­a necessity which, in respect to the leading truths, may likewise be traced in all after stages.  This necessity, originating in the very nature of the phenomena to be analysed and the faculties to be employed, more or less fully applies to the mind of the child as to that of the savage.  We say more or less fully, because the correspondence is not special but general only.  Were the environment the same in both cases, the correspondence would be complete.