264 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 
those days. As the inductive philosopher seated himself before this heap of rub' 
bish to winnow out the grains of truth, a mighty task was laid upon him. Every 
premise must be thoroughly established, every observation re-observed, every 
experiment re-conducted, and every comparison re-collated. Nothing less than 
a new creation lay before him. Well may the works of Bacon be christened, 
Novum Organum, and Instauratio Magna. 
We come now to consider: What is the tendency of the Baconian Philoso-^ 
phy ? History informs us of a certain Greek philosopher who died because he 
could not account for the tides on the ^gean Sea. His system of philosophy 
was not sufificiently comprehensive to include the true cause of tides. In a simi- 
lar way sometimes we are not in possession of a system of philosophy compre- 
hensive enough to account for the commotions of our age. Little do we suspect 
that out of some system of philosophy, perhaps of the mediaeval or ancient world, 
rolls the wave that breaks over us. 
Materialism has characterized our age, as is shown in our schools of science, 
philosophy and religion. Oken and Lamarck and DeMaillet, and the unknown 
author of the Vestiges of Creation represent various phases of materialistic science.. 
In philosophy, from the days of Locke, sensationalism has had a controUing 
influence over the human mind in Great Britain, has spread more or less over 
the continent and has reached our own shores. Various phases of materialistic 
philosophy are suggested by the names of Comte, Hobbs, Buckle, Spencer, Mill, 
and Draper. In religion some wiseacres have recently discovered that man is 
wholly made of the dust of the ground, just a breathing lump of clay. Whence 
comes this materialialism which has characterized our age? 
The process of the Baconian Philosophy necessarily excluded everything 
contrary to the order of nature. It was assumed that observation, comparisoik 
and experiment would exhaust the data of the material world, and that the logical 
faculty of the human mind could solve all the problems of the same. The induc- 
tive philosopher deals only with facts and the laws of the same, or, technically, 
with the uniformities of succession and co-existence which obtain among phe- 
nomena. Adopting the a /^5/^wr/ method, he ascends from particulars to gen- 
erals, priding himself as a man of facts who looks upon ideas as the chaff of 
things. He holds firmly to the doctrine of human nescience. To him the 
senses are the sources and measure of human knowledge, the only avenues to- 
things without. Thus conditioned, he can know nothing of things as they are in 
themselves absolutely, but only as they appear to his conditioned intelligence. 
Unfolding the mere appearance or conditions of things,, he goes forward to ex- 
pound them as the primary and radical elements of knowledge itself. 
Finite mind is conditioned also in regard to the extent of its knowledge. 
The universe is represented as a " polygon with but one of its infinitesimal sides 
adjusted to man's capacity, and every attempt to embrace, even in thought, the 
Infinite and Absolute, can only recoil upon him in mere negation and contradic- 
tion." Investigations conducted on such a plan would necessarily be narrow 
and materialistic in their tendency. Hence probably flows- that stream of mater- 
