CHAPTER I 



UNIVERSAL MATHEMATICS VERSUS UNIVERSAL PSYCHOLOGY 



Had Lord Bacon known that in the century following the 

 publication of the Advancement of Learning no school of philoso- 

 phers would acknowledge him as master, he would not have been 

 seriously disheartened at the prospect. Splendid as was the am- 

 bition of the scholar who chose all knowledge for his province, 

 that ambition did not include the founding of a school. In truth, 

 to his mind such an accomplishment seemed so slight, and the 

 distinction it won so petty, that he was content to leave it to 

 ingenious but narrow-minded men. What, he wished to found 

 was not a school of philosophy, but philosophy itself or science, 

 if you please, for in his day the two terms were still synonymous. 

 But had he known that by far the most important movement of 

 thought during the next three generations was to be in direct and 

 conscious opposition to his most cherished principles in England 

 as a reaction against his influence, on the continent in contemptu- 

 ous disregard of him only a sublime faith in their truth could 

 have saved him from utter discouragement. Writing in 1739, 

 the young David Hume comments upon the fact, that the whole 

 period of the pre-Socratic philosophy in Greece was ' 'nearly equal 

 to that betwixt my Lord Bacon and some late philosophers of 

 England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new foot- 

 ing." Yet the institution of a body of experimental "sciences 

 of man" was the part of Bacon's program that was nearest his 

 heart, and that he himself did most to forward. 



The phenomenon is certainly a striking one. Bacon had 

 taught that deduction, as a scientific method, was useful only 

 for purposes of instruction, and even so was better fitted to pro- 

 duce a showy than a real and thorough knowledge; and that 

 for the discovery and establishment of truth induction and ex- 



