Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/161

Rh the philosophy of sense-experience. He criticized those faults of his age that he thought stood in the way of clear seeing, such faults as verbalism, anthropomorphism, or undue regard for tradition and authority. He formulated a new "Organon" ("Novum Organum" ), a logic and methodology which was to correct and supplement the Aristotelian organon, and afford a basis for scientific procedure. But Bacon was significant not so much for what he formulated as for what he prophesied. He was the first to dream that magnificent dream which has been so largely realized in the course of the last century: the dream of the progressive control of nature through the patient and self-denying study of it. The kingdom of man, the "New Atlantis," is to be founded on knowledge. "Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known, the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause, is in operation as the rule." Observe nature in order that you may use nature, thus converting it into the habitation, instrument, and treasure of man. Here is the supreme maxim of our modern world, and the chief ground of its peculiar confidence and hopefulness.

Descartes and Hobbes were the founders of modern rationalism, but each in a different way. Descartes (1596–1650) found mathematics a model of procedure. In other words, he proposed that men should philosophize after the manner of mathematics. He did not believe that mathematics, with its applications to physics, was itself the highest knowledge. He sought rather to formulate a logic that should be as exact as mathematics, but more fundamental and universal; thus affording a basis for the demonstration of the higher truths concerning God and the soul. The "Discourse on Method" is a record of the author's profound regard for mathematics and of his own search for a like certainty in philosophy. But Hobbes (1588–1679) was a follower of Galileo in a different sense. He proposed not so much to imitate mathematics as to adopt and extend it. He represents that idea which La Place so eloquently proclaimed a century later, and which the work of Newton seemed