apparent effects, from the knowledge we have of some possible 

 production or generation of the same; and of such production, as 

 has been or may be, from the knowledge we have of the effects. 

 Method, therefore, in the study of philosophy, is the shortest way 

 of finding out effects by their known causes or of causes by their 

 known effects. . . . The first beginnings, therefore, of knowledge 

 are the phantasms of sense and imagination; and that there be 

 such phantasms of sense and imagination we know well enough by 

 nature; but to know why they be or from what causes they pro- 

 ceed, is the work of ratiocination; which consists in composition 

 and division or resolution. There is therefore no method by which 

 we find out the causes of things, but is either compositive or resolu- 

 tive, or partly compositive and partly resolutive, and the resolutive 

 is commonly called analytical method, as the compositive is called 

 synthetical." The fourth, fifth, and sixth paragraphs of the same 

 chapter illustrate what Hobbes meant by this two-fold method. 

 Seeing that universal things are contained in the nature of singular 

 things, the knowledge of them is to be acquired by resolution. For 

 example, a square is a singular thing which may be resolved or 

 analysed into a plane, terminated with a certain number of equal 

 and straight lines and right angles. By such a resolution, he says, 

 there is obtained a number of things universal to all matter, viz., 

 line, plane, terminated, angle, straightness, rectitude and equality. 

 Or again take the individual thing gold. Resolution or analysis 

 gives one such concepts as solid, visible, heavy and many others 

 more universal than gold itself. These may again be resolved till 

 one arrives at such things as are most universal. "And in this 

 manner, by resolving continually, we may come to know what those 

 things are, whose causes being first known severally, and after- 

 wards compounded, bring us to the knowledge of singular things. 

 I conclude, therefore, that the method of attaining to the universal 

 knowledge of things is purely analytical." 1 But these universals, 

 having been discovered and defined, then comes the compositive or 

 synthetic work of science. To quote Hobbes verbatim, "we are to 

 observe what effect a body moved produceth, when we consider 

 nothing in it besides its motion; and we see presently that this 

 makes a line or length; next, what the motion of a long body pro- 



1 Op. Cit. Ch. VI, Par. 4. 



74 



