60 SCIENCE IN THE LAST HALF CENTURY. 



social organization; while, at tbe same time, he indicated the boundary 

 between the province of real, and that of imaginary, knowledge. The 

 "Principles of Philosophy" and the "Leviathan" embody a coherent 

 system of purely scientific thought in language which is' a model of 

 clear and vigorous English style. 



DESCARTES. 



At the same time, in France, a man of far greater scientific capacity 

 than either Bacon or Hobbes, Rene Descartes, not only in his immortal 

 "Discours de la M^thode" and elsewhere, went down to the foundations 

 of scientific certainty, but, in his " Principes de Philosophic," indicated 

 where the goal of physical science really lay. However, Descartes was 

 an eminent mathematician, and it would seem that the bent of his mind 

 led him to over-estimate the value of deductive reasoning from general 

 principles, as much as Bacon had underestimated it. TJje progress of 

 physical science has been effected neither by Baconians nor by Cartes- 

 ians — as such, but by men like Galileo and Harvey, Boyle and Newton, 

 who would have done their work just as well if neither Bacon nor Des- 

 cartes had ever propounded his views respecting the manner in which 

 scientific investigation should be pursued. 



PROGRESS WITHOUT "FRUITS." 



The progress of science, during the first century after Bacon's death, 

 by no means verified his sanguine prediction of the fruits which it would 

 yield. For, though the revived and renewed study of nature had spread 

 and grown to an extent which surpassed reasonable expectation, the 

 practical results — the "good to men's estate" — were at first b^^ no 

 means apparent. Sixty years after Bacon's death, Newton had crowned 

 the long labors of the astronomers and the physicists by co-ordinating 

 the phenomena of molar motion throughout the visible universe into one 

 vast system; but the "Principia" helped no man to either wealth or 

 comfort. Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz had opened up new worlds 

 to the mathematician, but the acquisitions of their genius enriched only 

 man's ideal estate. Descartes had laid the foundations of rational 

 cosmogony and of physiological psychology; Boyle had produced models 

 of experimentation in various branches of physics and chemistry; Pascal 

 and Torricelli bad weighed the air; Malpighi and Grew, Kay and Wil- 

 loughby had done work of no less importance in the biological sciences; 

 but weaving and spinning were carried on with the old appliances; 

 nobody could travel faster by sea or by land than at any previous time 

 in the world's history, and King George could send a message from 

 London to York no faster than King John might have done. Metals 

 were worked from their ores by immemorial rule of thumb, and the 

 center of the iron trade of these islands was still among the oak forests 

 of Sussex. The utmost skill of our mechanicians did not get beyond 

 the production of a coarse watch. 



