Page:Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - with preliminary dissertations on the history of the sciences - illustrated by engravings (IA gri 33125011196181).pdf/162

108 be provided with proper materials. In like manner, your method, supposing it to be perfect, can never advance you a single step in the explanation of natural causes, unless you are in possession of the facts necessary for determining their effects. They who, without stirring from their libraries, attempt to discourse concerning the works of nature, may indeed tell us what sort of world they would have made, if God had committed that task to their ingenuity; but, without a wisdom truly divine, it is impossible for them to form an idea of the universe, at all approaching to that in the mind of its Creator. And, although your method promises everything that can be expected from human genius, it does not, therefore, lay any claim to the art of divination; but only boasts of deducing from the assumed data, all the truths which follow from them as legitimate consequences; which data, can, in physics, be nothing else but principles previously established by experiment.” In Gassendi’s controversies with Descartes, the name of Bacon seems to be studiously introduced on various occasions, in a manner still better calculated to excite the curiosity of his antagonist; and in his historical review of logical systems, the heroical attempt which gave birth to the Novum Organon is made the subject of a separate chapter, immediately preceding that which relates to the Metaphysical Meditations of Descartes.

The partiality of Gassendi for the Epicurean physics, if not originally imbibed from Bacon, must have been powerfully encouraged by the favourable terms in which he always mentions the Atomic or Corpuscular theory. In its conformity to that luminous simplicity which everywhere characterizes the operations of nature, this theory certainly possesses a decided superiority over all the other conjectures of the ancient philosophers concerning the material universe; and it reflects no small honour on the sagacity both of Bacon and of Gassendi, to have perceived so clearly the strong analogical presumption which this conformity afforded in its favour, prior to the unexpected lustre thrown upon it by the researches of the Newtonian school. With all his admiration, however, of the Epicurean physics, Bacon nowhere shews the slightest leaning towards the metaphysical or ethical doctrines of the same sect; but, on the contrary, considered (and, I apprehend, rightly considered) the atomic theory as incomparably more hostile to atheism, than the hypothesis of four mutable elements, and of one immutable fifth essence. In this last opinion, there is every reason to believe that Gassendi fully concurred; more especially, as he was a zealous advocate for the investigation of final causes, even in inquiries strictly physical. At the same time, it cannot be denied, that, on many questions, both of Meta-

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