and in this respect, the former make greater claims upon the judgment, the
latter upon the memory. It was known to the schoolmen,(19) that, as the
syllogism requires two premises, no science can proceed from a single
first principle which cannot be the subject of further deduction, but must
have several, at least two. The specially classifying sciences: Zoology,
Botany, and also Physics and Chemistry, inasmuch as they refer all
inorganic action to a few fundamental forces, have most subordination;
history, on the other hand, has really none at all; for the general in it
consists merely in the survey of the principal periods, from which,
however, the particular events cannot be deduced, and are only
subordinated to them according to time, but according to the concept are
co-ordinate with them. Therefore, history, strictly speaking, is certainly
rational knowledge, but is not science. In mathematics, according to
Euclid’s treatment, the axioms alone are indemonstrable first principles,
and all demonstrations are in gradation strictly subordinated to them. But
this method of treatment is not essential to mathematics, and in fact each
proposition introduces quite a new space construction, which in itself is
independent of those which precede it, and indeed can be completely
comprehended from itself, quite independently of them, in the pure
intuition or perception of space, in which the most complicated
construction is just as directly evident as the axiom; but of this more
fully hereafter. Meanwhile every mathematical proposition remains always a
universal truth, which is valid for innumerable particular cases; and a
graduated process from the simple to the complicated propositions which
are to be deduced from them, is also essential to mathematics; therefore,
in every respect mathematics is a science. The completeness of a science
as such, that is, in respect of form, consists in there being as much
subordination and as little co-ordination of the principles as possible.
Scientific talent in general is, therefore, the faculty of subordinating
the concept-spheres according to their different determinations, so that,
as Plato repeatedly counsels, a science shall not be constituted by a
general concept and an indefinite multiplicity immediately under it, but
that knowledge shall descend by degrees from the general to the
particular, through intermediate concepts and divisions, according to
closer and closer definitions. In Kantian language this is called
satisfying equally the law of homogeneity and that of specification. It
arises from this peculiar nature of scientific completeness, that the aim
of science is not greater certainty—for certainty may be possessed in just
as high a degree by the most disconnected particular knowledge—but its aim
is rather the facilitating of rational knowledge by means of its form, and
the possibility of the completeness of rational knowledge which this form
affords.