By its lower extremity it is contiguous to inorganic science (the physico-chemical phenomena of vegetative life). By its higher extremity, (intellectual functions), it reaches to the final science, or sociology. But the adherence is far from being as close in one case as in the other. At the moment when we pass from the inorganic world to the world of living beings, according to positive philosophy, there is a sudden “enrichment of the real.” The transition is very marked. The domain of biology is not so sharply separated from that of sociology. For the higher biological functions, the intellectual functions, cannot be analysed from the point of view of the individual, at least in man, but only from the point of view of the species. We must then, while preserving the distinction between the two sciences, admit a kind of inter-relation between them. Undoubtedly sociology could not be founded so long as biology had not made decisive progress. But, conversely, sociology once founded alone completes the positive study of the highest biological functions. Certainly, biology has not been less transformed than chemistry during the last sixty years, and the state in which we see it to-day differs singularly from that in which Comte knew it. It has been developed and differentiated far beyond what he could foresee. None the less he conceived some of its principles with remarkable power. He had a precise idea of that which could constitute a general biology that is, a single physiology and anatomy for the whole of living beings. He knew the fecundity of the comparative method, and he pointed out its analogy with the method of analysis in mathematics. Finally, although he refused to adopt the transformist hypothesis, he had understood the importance of Lamarck’s work. FOOTNOTES: [154] Cours, VI, 772. [155] Cours, IV, 285-7. [156] Cours, III, 8-239. [157] Cours, III, 490, 510. [158] Cours, III, 224-7. [159] Cours, III, 271-2. [160] Cours, III, 237. [161] Cours, III, 326 sq. [162] Cours, III. 259-65. [163] Cours, III. 284-5. [164] Cours, III. 282-546. [165] Cours, III. 437. [166] Cours, III. 456-7. [167] Cours, III, 452. [168] Cours, III, 444. [169] Cours, III, 441-2. [170] Cours, III, 452-3. [171] Cours, III, 529-31; Pol. pos., I, 594. [172] Cours, III, 553-6. [173] Cours, III, 380-1. [174] Cours, III, 562-3. [175] Pol. Pos., I, 591. [176] Pol. Pos., I, 587. [177] Pol. Pos., I, 587; Cours, III, 419-20. [178] Pol. Pos., I, 589. [179] Cours, VI, 766-68. CHAPTER V PSYCHOLOGY