216 THE WORLD MACHINE 



volumes of the Great Instauration finds a work devoid of a 

 single contribution to human knowledge of even the remotest 

 value. While a half-dozen of his contemporaries were making 

 a beginning in a half-dozen new sciences, doing a work which 

 the centuries will not undo, Bacon in his study conceives that 

 he is the founder of all scientific method. He begins his famous 

 Instauration : 



" Francis of Verulam thought thus, and such is the method 

 which he determined within himself, and which he thought it 

 concerned the living and posterity to know." 



In this sounding preface we learn that its author is not 

 ignorant that he " stands alone in an experiment almost too 

 bold and astonishing to obtain credit ; yet he thought it not right 

 to desert either the cause or himself, but to boldly enter on the 

 way and explore the only path which is pervious to the human 

 mind." * 



The italics are not Bacon's. How this vain and empty- 

 handed boaster could have so imposed upon his generation, 

 to say nothing of the generations which followed, is one of the 

 curiosities of literary history. The truth as to the author of the 

 " Baconian philosophy " is that he was simply a philosopher ; 

 he dreamed while others worked. He may have been of some 

 inspiration to others who followed him, and who were stirred 

 by his fervid vaticinations ; he must have seemed to the truly 

 scientific spirits of his time a sort of Duke of Argyll. 



It is with far greater justice that claims as the father of 

 modern scientific method have been . put forward for Rene* 

 Descartes. It is so that he is regarded by Huxley ; the authority 

 of the opinion is assuredly high. 



Man, observed some reflecting sage, unlike the animals, is 

 born to think. If ever there were a man to whom this would 

 literally apply, it was Descartes. He came of a distinguished 

 family in Touraine ; as a child he was known as le petit 

 philosophe ; philosopher he remained to the end of his days. 

 He had all the faults of his calling. 



When he came of age, most of the great discoveries which 

 blazoned the seventeenth century with such a cachet of distinc- 

 tion had been made ; his especial mission in life was to disclose 

 the mechanism of the world, and, with a single exception, he 



1 Advancement of Learning, p. 2. 



