12 THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE 



casting aside the prudent reserve of Ms 

 predecessor in regard to those matters 

 about which the Crown or the Church 

 might have something to say, extended 

 scientific methods of inquiry to the phe- 

 nomena of mind and the problems of 

 social organisation ; while, at the same 

 time, he indicated the boundary between 

 the province of real, and that of imagi- 

 nary, knowledge. The ' Principles of Phi- 

 losophy ' and the ' Leviathan ' embody 

 a coherent system of purely scientific 

 thought in language which is a model of 

 clear and vigorous English style. At the 

 same time, in France, a man of far greater 

 scientific capacity than either Bacon or 

 Des- Hobbes, Rene Descartes, not only in his 

 immortal 'Discours de la Methode' and 

 elsewhere, went down to the foundations 

 of scientific certainty, but, in his 'Prin- 

 cipes de Philosophie,' indicated where the 

 goal of physical science really lay. How- 

 ever, Descartes was an eminent mathema- 



