236 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



reaction consisteth the nature of sense, there will pro- 

 ceed an endeavor back to the retina. This endeavor 

 outwards is the thing called light, or the phantasm of a 

 lucid body. From this utter confusion of bodies, 

 subjective and objective, physical and political, and 

 motions, real and occult, proceed his deductions. It is 

 no wonder that he had continual controversies about 

 scientific questions, in which he was always worsted. 

 One of the most famous resulted from his explanation 

 of the barometer. In his desire to assume body for 

 everything he was forced, as was Descartes, to include 

 space in the category of substance. So to account for 

 the space above the mercury, he asserted that air passed 

 in and out through the mercury because he had pre- 

 viously stated that a vacuum was a body which could 

 not be increased or diminished. Enough has been 

 given to show that Hobbes was not a man of science 

 and that his method was not the scientific method; 

 and the same can be shown with certainty of all 

 philosophers who flourished previously to the nineteenth 

 century. It was not until then that a systematic and 

 large accumulation of scientific observations of all 

 sorts was at hand. Even now, the biological sciences 

 are the only ones possible as a guide to ethics because 

 the mathematical sciences, physics, astronomy, and 

 chemistry, are too remote from human passions and 

 emotions to be serviceable. 



Apparently in the biological sciences it was neces- 



