234 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



While it is true that Bacon maintained a distinction 

 between those things which are proper for scientific 

 elucidation and those things which are not; and al- 

 though he avoided a universal philosophy of the sensa- 

 tions; yet his predilection for the scientific method and 

 his inclusion in it of such subjects as history, which 

 in spite of time and effort has made little progress as 

 a science, pointed the road to that philosophy. So also 

 some believe him to be the originator of the idea of 

 applying the scientific method to society and ethics. 

 Such does not seem to be correct and I think it is not 

 possible, because the rule of science over life could not 

 have been accomplished until a great accumulation of 

 scientific observations had been made. No such ac- 

 cumulation had been undertaken before the last cen- 

 tury. In Bacon's time only a few enlightened minds 

 were convinced of the need of systematic experimental 

 knowledge. Even the British school of philosophers, 

 known as rationalists, materialists, or atheists, who 

 were more or less followers or supposed to be followers 

 of Bacon, was a school of metaphysicians and not of 

 scientists. 



Of these philosophers, Hpbbes undoubtedly had more 

 of the scientific closeness of reasoning than the others. 

 He based all knowledge on the sensations and in so 

 far seems to exalt science to be the arbiter of life, but 

 nothing could be less scientific than the postulates and 

 the conclusions of his philosophy. He had little reali- 



