The genealogical tree, or classification of arts and sciences, which with a few modifications was borrowed from Bacon and appeared at the end of the Prospectus, is seen to be faulty and inadequate.

It distributes the various branches of knowledge with reference to faculties of the human understanding, instead of grouping them according to their objective relations to one another.

This led to many awkward results, as when the art of printing is placed by the side of orthography as a subdivision of Logic, to which also is given the art of heraldry or emblazonment.

There is awkwardness too in dividing architecture into three heads, and then placing civil architecture under national jurisprudence, and naval architecture under social jurisprudence, while under fine arts no kind of architecture has any place.

But when we have multiplied these objections to the uttermost, the effect of the magnificence and vastness of the scheme remains exactly what it was.
Even more important than the exposition of human knowledge was the exposition of the degrees by which it had been slowly reared.