2 2 The Concept of Method 



I. The Purpose or End of Knowledge 



Historically the question of the true end of knowledge has 

 always been more or less closely bound up with the problem of 

 the summum honum, and sometimes " so intimately that the two 

 become synonymous. In all cases the end of knowledge has de- 

 pended directly or indirectly upon the particular ethical and in- 

 tellectual atmosphere of the age in which the question has been 

 consciously asked. With the Greeks the end of knowledge was 

 conditioned by their peculiar conception of the development of 

 an ethical personality, and the end of knowledge became the real- 

 isation of the Greek ideal of the moral life; with the medieval 

 Christian the purpose of knowledge was to subserve divine ends 

 and to assure the attainment of everlasting salvation ; with the 

 modern scientists, of whom Bacon stands as one of the earliest, 

 the purpose of knowledge becomes more immediately utilitarian 

 and pragmatic in character, and its mission primarily the amelio- 

 ration of the physical conditions of the life of man. 



Bacon frequently expresses his belief in the immediate prac- 

 tical character of human knowledge. In the " Valerius Termi- 

 nus," one of his earliest philosophical works, he says that " the 

 true end, scope, and office of knowledge " consists not in dis- 

 course or in arguments ; but in effecting and working, and in dis- 

 covery of particulars not revealed before, for the better endow- 

 ment and help of man's life; and throughout his writings and 

 his life he has ever before him the aim of attaining knowledge 

 that will be of practical value to mankind. It is perhaps well to 

 remember in this connection that he met his death in experiment- 

 ing with the principles of cold storage. 



Bacon realised very clearly that there is a correspondence be- 

 tween the thought of man and the course of Nature, and that 

 man can command and interpret the forces and materials of 

 nature while himself remaining subservient to the laws of this 

 same nature of which he is a part. The only, limit to his knowl- 

 edge is that imposed by the character of the faculties with which 

 he is endowed. In addition to the actual physical imperfections 

 of the senses as instruments for the discovery of true scientific 

 knowledge, " facility to believe, impatience to doubt, temerity to 

 answer, glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, sloth to 

 search, seeking things in words, resting in part of nature," all 



