THE ARBITER OF ETHICS 233 



guide to natural philosophy and if knowledge must 

 finally rest on the sensations, Bacon would be consid- 

 ered by many as the founder of the doctrine elaborated 

 by Locke, Hobbes, Hume, and others that there is noth- 

 ing in the intelligence which has not previously been a 

 matter of the sensations. But as de Remusat * points 

 out : " To say that in life all knowledge is derived 

 only from the data of experience, and to say that 

 everything which is in the intellect has been a matter 

 of the senses, is to say two immensely different things. 

 And Bacon has not said the second of these two things ; 

 he has not even said absolutely the first; he admits in- 

 spired knowledge." That is, Bacon apparently divided 

 knowledge into classes, the physical and the metaphysi- 

 cal, and based the former only on the sensations. In 

 confirmation of this opinion Bacon took a positive stand 

 against atheism : " No one denies the existence of the 

 gods, except him to whom it is serviceable that the 

 gods do not exist. To deny God, is to destroy the 

 nobility of the human race." 



There seems then good reason for considering the 

 Novum Orgqmim as the starting-point of modern sci- 

 ence, as in it is developed the doctrine which still pre- 

 vails, that science must depend on observation, and 

 that scientific theory must conform to the data of 

 experience. 



* Vie de Bacon, p. 266. 



