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Classification of the Sci
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Meantime, let it not be understood that the classification is to ignore the scientific discoveries of the past. For the memoirs of that work are not so poor as not to merit being read critically, precisely as we shall read the memoirs of tomorrow. Such reading is, therefore, of the nature of scientific inquiry. True, it is not original research; but there is original research still to be done in the same specific science. For none of the sciences of the past is finished. If it be one of the positive sciences that is in question, there is not a single conclusion belonging to it which has in the past been made sufficiently precise or sufficiently indubitable. If it be a branch of mathematics, its propositions require to be further generalized, as well as to be more accurately limited. For these reasons all the old science that still stands is to be retained in the classification, but in its most modern forms.

The author has spared no pains to make the most minute