In classifying our existing Knowledge, then, on our present basis of Scientific acquisition, we must draw a distinct line between Mathematics, Astronomy, and Physics, on the one side, and all remaining departments of Thought, on the other, and set these three Sciences apart as the Exact or Infallible ones, occupying a rank superior to the others, by virtue of the Certainty and Exactitude with which we are able, through the operation of the true Deductive Method, to ascertain their Principles and Phenomena. We shall then be enabled--by the aid of Comte's principle that the domains of investigation take rank in proportion to the complexity of their Phenomena--to ascertain, after a very brief examination, the place which History holds in the Scale, and how much claim it can lay to a Scientific character.
Comte closes the Hierarchy of the Positive Sciences by adding to the three which we have denominated _Exact_ Sciences, Chemistry, Biology, Sociology, and _La Morale_, in the order in which they are named, as indicated by the nature of the Phenomena with which they are concerned. If we adopt this arrangement, and annex to each of these _general_ Sciences, as they are called in the language of Positivism, its derived or dependent branches, we shall have the following order: Chemistry; Geology; Biology, including Botany, Human and Comparative Anatomy, and Physiology; Zoology; Sociology; and _La Morale_. Although this enlarged scale is defective, many important departments, such as Ethnology, Philology, etc., being left out, it is sufficiently correct to show the complex nature of the Phenomena with which History must concern itself.
History--in its largest aspect, that in which we are now considering it--is the record of the progress of the Race in all its various modes of development. In it is therefore involved the examination and consideration of all the agencies, Material or Spiritual, which have operated on Mankind through past ages. Mathematical questions concerning Number, Form, and Force; Astronomical problems on the relation of our Earth to other Celestial bodies, and the effect thereof on Climate, Soil, and Modes of Life; Physical inquiries into the influence of Heat, Electricity, etc., on individuals and nations; Chemical investigations into the nature of different kinds of Food, and their relations to the animal economy, and hence to the career of Peoples; Geological researches to discover the origin of the human Race, and its position in the Animal Kingdom; questions of Physiology, of Social Life, of Ethnology, of Metaphysics, of Religion; every problem, in fine, which the world has been called to consider, forms a part of the record of its progress and comes within the scope of History. As the Descriptology, or verbal daguerreotyping of the Continuity of Society, and hence of the Dynamical aspect of Concrete Sociology, History stands, then, in a sense, at the head of the scale, omitting Theology, the true apex of the pyramid of Sciences, which pyramid Comte has decapitated of this very apex.