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a long history of such unconcerted specialization as we have sup- posed. These conceptions would presently serve as bonds of con- nection between the scattered workers. They would serve as clues to common interests between them. They would lead to meanings previously undiscovered in the phenomena, and they would promote further investigation of the phenomena. Thus, in place of desultory pursuit of knowledge about interesting physical facts, there would arise a science of physics. Although actual development of physics has not literally followed this order, the essential development has involved virtually the above stages. Consciousness of a subject-matter, on the one hand manifesting diverse phenomena, and on the other hand strictly delimited from other subject-matter, has been a precondition of a science of physics at once comprehensive and independent.
We may vary the form of the illustration in the case of chem- istry. Suppose something like our present knowledge of chemical occurrences had grown up before there was any such generaliza- tion as "matter" or "atomic phenomena." Suppose some men had by some sort of intuition grouped the metals together, and had observed their behavior under different circumstances. Sup- pose others had studied salts, others acids, etc. Again we should have had a certain grade of knowledge, in a certain system of arrangement, but we should have had no science of chemistry. There must first have arisen a conception of an order of phe- nomena common to all matter, and conforming to laws varying merely in details according to the composition and circumstances of the particular portions of matter in question. Otherwise more or less interesting information about capriciously distinguished sorts of matter could never attain the dignity of a science of chemistry.
The like is true of biology, and the literal history of biology has perhaps more obviously conformed to the logical necessity we are citing than the history of physics or chemistry. The " natural history " still found in many schools, harks back to conceptions of the organic world which are logically neither more nor less respectable than the traditional English farmer's division of the animal kingdom into " game, vermin, and stock." No matter Tiow
