NOTES TO BOOK VI. 127 



follow the example, without its being necessary to give a 

 new impulse to real science.'* 



In England, we are accustomed to hear Francis Bacon, 

 rather than Descartes, spoken of as the first great anta- 

 gonist of the Aristotelian schools, and the legislator of 

 modern philosophy. But it is true, both of one and the 

 other, that the overthrow of the ancient system had been 

 effectively begun before their time by the practical dis- 

 coverers here mentioned, and others who, by experiment 

 and reasoning, established truths inconsistent with the re- 

 ceived Aristotelian doctrines. Gilbert in England, Kepler 

 in Germany, as well as Benedetti and Galileo in Italy, gave 

 a powerful impulse to the cause of real knowledge, before 

 the influence of Bacon and Descartes had produced any 

 general effect. What Bacon really did was this ; that' 

 by the august image which he presented of a future Phi- 

 losophy, the rival of the Aristotelian, and far more power- 

 ful and extensive, he drew to it the affections and hopes of 

 all men of comprehensive and vigorous minds, as well as 

 of those who attended to special trains of discovery. He 

 announced a New Method, not merely a correction of 

 special current errours ; he thus converted the Insurrec- 

 tion into a Revolution, and established a new philosophical 

 Dynasty. Descartes had, in some degree, the same pur- 

 pose ; and, in addition to this, he not only proclaimed him- 

 self the author of a New Method, but professed to give a 

 complete System of the results of the Method. His phy- 

 sical philosophy was put forth as complete and demonstra- 

 tive, and thus involved the vices of the ancient dogmatism . 

 Telesius and Campanella had also grand notions of an 

 entire reform in the method of philosophizing, as I have 

 noticed in the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Book xn. 



