there is no cause for alarm, the spheres of theology and science are 

 utterly disparate. This view of things, which has done untold harm 

 in the history of thought, is exhibited very nicely in the encyclo- 

 paedic survey, which Bacon gives in his so-called Intellectual Globe. 

 He outlines a classification of the sciences very comprehensive but 

 singularly defective in its basis, reverting, as it does, to the old 

 notion of the faculties of the mind. This was the theoretic tripartite 

 division of the human soul into memory, imagination and reason. 

 Corresponding to reason there is philosophy or science, with a there- 

 fold division, the philosophy of God, of Nature, and of Man. The 

 first, however, the philosophy of God, must content itself with the 

 refutation of atheistic arguments only, because, in revealed theol- 

 ogy, man has been given the dogmas necessary for his salvation and 

 these are a matter of faith and not of knowledge. 



Hobbes follows Bacon in this regard, 1 differing from him, how- 

 ever, in nearly every other important respect. Particularly are his 

 observations upon the method of science different from those of 

 the Lord Chancellor, and they are much more in line with the actual 

 processes of the sciences. On his third visit to Paris in 1631, 

 Hobbes came into intimate friendship with Gassendi, Mersenne, 

 and Des Cartes. The most important result of the visit was the 

 influence exerted upon him by the geometrical method. Here was 

 a method which led to conclusions of apparently undeniable valid- 

 ity. Hobbes was enthusiastic. He came back to England, deter- 

 mined to apply this geometrical method to other fields of investiga- 

 tion. Thus he hoped to be able to achieve permanent and indis- 

 putable results. Now Hobbes saw that the method geometry was 

 using was different from the processes of scholastic, syllogistic 

 deduction. By the new method one obtained new knowledge; he 

 was able to advance. This geometrical method Hobbes saw to be 

 synthetic as well as analytic, and these characteristics, he held, are 

 the essential ones of all scientific method. And Hobbes was right, 

 though, to be sure, he did not fully realize the significance of syn- 

 thes s in scientific procedures. In the sixth chapter of his De Cor- 

 pore and the first paragraph, Hobbes says as follows: " Philosophy 

 (or science, for he uses the word, philosophy, in its generic sense) is 

 the knowledge we acquire, by true ratiocination of appearances, or 



1 De Corpore, Ch. I, Par. 8. 



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