2

Logic II 2

are the different departments of the endeavor to attain
the truth, and by considering the relations of these different
endeavors to one another, particularly with reference to
the aid that they afford one another. This is the need to
us of the inquiry I propose here to enter upon, that of the
natural classification of the sciences.

I do not know how many Many have been the attempts there have been
to make at a general classification of the sciences. Dr. Richardson's
little book upon the subject ^* is quite incomplete,
only enumerating one hundred and forty-six systems. They
are naturally many, because not only are their purposes
various, but what the conceive their conceptions of a science to be, are divergent,
and their notions of what classification is are
still more so. Many of these schemes introduce sciences which nobody
ever heard of; so that they seem to aim at classifying,
not actually existent sciences, but possible sciences. It
would seem to be A somewhat presumptuous undertaking , to classify is that of classifying

^* Classification By Ernest Cushing Richardson. 1901.