BACON AND DESCARTES 271 



of printing, the discovery of the New World, the heliocentric 

 hypothesis, the idea of the earth as a magnet, the exploration of 

 the human body, the Reformation, and the progress of mathe- 

 matical science, were already widely opening men's minds, so that 

 by the end of the sixteenth century it is not surprising to find 

 the new knowledge reacting upon the old philosophy. With this 

 movement two great names will always be associated : viz. those 

 of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. 



Bacon, because of his official position and immense philosophical 

 and literary ability, was able to draw universal attention to the 

 methods of science and especially to the method of investigation 

 bv induction, so that his indirect service to science was great. 

 Bacon's true place in science was, however, well understood by 

 his contemporaries, for one of the greatest, Harvey, discoverer of 

 the circulation of the blood, remarks that, "the Lord Chancellor 

 writes of science like a Lord Chancellor." 



Descartes, far more important than Bacon in respect to his con- 

 tributions to various branches of science, likewise stirred the in- 

 tellect of Europe and helped to bring about those changes in the 

 old philosophy which in the minds of many made it new. Des- 

 cartes was not only a mathematician of the first rank but an in- 

 genious and original worker in many branches of scientific inquiry 

 such as music, anatomy, physiology, optics, etc. It is to him that 

 we owe the first ideas of mechanism in living bodies, his notion 

 of a "man machine" being highly original and suggestive. 



Science, says Descartes, may be compared to a tree ; metaphysics 

 is the root, physics the trunk, and the three chief branches are 

 mechanics, medicine, and morals. 



Here are my books, he is reported to have told a visitor, as he 

 pointed to the animals which he had dissected. 



The conservation of health, he writes in 1646, has always been the 

 principal end of my studies. 



Bacon and Descartes were methodologists, both urging the 

 fundamental importance to progress, of method and its right use in 

 investigation and inquiry, and Descartes, younger by almost a 



