48 THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE n 



Bacon's younger contemporary, Hobbes, casting 

 aside the prmlent reserve of his 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 phenomena 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 

 imaginary, knowledge. The " Principles of Phil- 

 osophy " 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 

 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 " Principes de Philosophic," indicated where 

 the goal of physical science really lay. However, 

 Descartes was an eminent mathematician, and it 

 would seem that the bent of his mind led him to 

 overestimate the value of deductive reasoning 

 from general principles, as much as Bacon 

 had under-estimated it. The progress of 

 physical science has been effected neither by 

 Baconians nor by Cartesians, as such, but 

 by men like Galileo and Harvey, Boyle and 

 Newton, who would have done their work just 

 as well if neither Bacon nor Descartes had 

 ever propounded their views respecting the 



