Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/384

368. This leads him to nominalism. If you accept his principle that concepts are merely names, there can be no objection to his conclusions. But the concept is not only a general name, it is a general thought, which is ascribed to objects, and therefore has objective significance. It is a general idea that has objective reality. If concepts are mere names, it is inconsistent in Hobbes to base his philosophy on such notions as body, motion, and extension. Furthermore, his theory of sensation cannot explain how motion is suddenly transformed into sensation, nor even how the thought-process is derived from sensation. In spite of all contradictions, however, one thorough-going, normative principle prevails in his philosophy. It is that of motion.

Hobbes cannot be designated as a follower of Bacon, though he agrees with him in his general tendency to base the knowledge of nature on experience. He is rather to be reckoned among the pupils of Descartes, who also constructs the universe with matter and motion. Hobbes goes further than Descartes in his endeavor to explain mechanically even psychical occurrences. We may say that Hobbes was the first to consider the question as to the possibility of scientific knowledge; he is the originator of empirical epistemology. Locke's sensualism and Berkeley's phenomenalism are already implicitly contained in his doctrine of sensation. To him also physiological psychology owes its origin.

These are two of the hitherto unedited letters of Descartes, of which an account was given in the Archiv. (IV, 3, pp. 442-449; 4, 529-556). Subsequent research has convinced T. that, besides the two now published, there are yet missing only eleven. He gives, so far as they are known, the subject and dates of these letters, and their numbers in the classifications of Arbogast and Lahire. The two letters published are in the library of Victor Cousin at Sorbonne. The first contains some uncomplimentary remarks upon L’Aristarchus Samius of Roberval; complaints that a professor of Utrecht, in a work entitled Fundamenta Physics, has simply copied his results along with many mistakes of his own; inquiries concerning a new kind of glasses which a Paris optician has made; and replies to Mersenne's inquiries regarding oscillating bodies. The second is very short, but mentions that he has been for two months regularly observing the variations of the barometer and speculating regarding its explanation.