Such a complete and exhaustive consideration of the Facts and Causes of Human Progress as would suffice for the construction of a _Science of History_, would necessarily include _all_ the Branches of Inquiry above mentioned. While, therefore, _History_, as it has been used in these papers, and as it is especially exhibited in the present one, has had this comprehensive signification, the term is not applied by Comte to any of the Departments of which he treated; and a very different meaning, and one much more circumscribed, attaches to the qualified expression which he uses in its stead. The Dynamic Branch of Sociology does not appertain, even in his own estimation, to _History_ proper, but to _The Philosophy of History_, which is the title by which he designates it. Strictly speaking, it does not appertain to that, in any broad sense. It is mainly an inquiry into the Theological, Political, and Social Principles of the Past and Future, and leaves unnoticed many questions of equal importance with those discussed, and which, in the constitution of a comprehensive _Philosophy of History_, would occupy an equally important place. But leaving this point aside, it is sufficient to indicate the fact that Comte, in conformity with the plan upon which he proceeded in the investigation of other Departments of the Universe, eliminated from his Historical examination all _concrete_ questions, everything relating primarily to individuals or nations, or to the causes of their peculiar development; on the same ground on which he set aside Botany, Zoology, Mineralogy, etc. In the beginning of his treatise on Social Dynamics, he says: 'We must avoid confounding the _abstract_ research into the laws of social existence with the _concrete_ history of human societies, the explanation of which can result only from a very advanced knowledge of the whole of these laws. _Our employment of history in this inquiry, then, must be essentially abstract._ It would, in fact, be history without the names of men, or even of nations, if it were not necessary to avoid all such puerile affectation as there would be in depriving ourselves of the use of names which may elucidate our exposition or consolidate our thought.... Geological considerations must enter into such _concrete_ inquiry, and we have but little positive knowledge of geology; and the same is true of questions of climate, race, etc.' And again he says, the inquiry is to be conducted 'stripped of all circumstances of climate, locality, etc.'