418 ON THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE OF THE 



Sorrierre, in his famous Voyage en Angleterre, published in 

 1664, is probably entitled to more consideration than his 

 own name could, of itself, attach to it ; for he had acted for 

 some time as the Secretary of one of those associations of Pari- 

 sian philosophers in which the Academy of Sciences had its be- 

 ginning *. Ci Ce grand homme," says he, speaking of Bacon, 

 " est sans doute celuy qui a le plus puissamment solicite les in- 

 " terests de la physique, et excite le monde a faire des ex- 

 " periences f ." A similar observation is made, and in words 

 equally strong, by the Abbe Gallois, in one of the numbers 

 of the Journal des Savans, published in 1666 ; a year signalized 

 by the establishment of the Academy of Sciences %. Bacon is 

 also represented as the father of the inductive or experimental 

 method, by John Baptiste du Hamel, the person who first 

 held the office of Secretary to that Academy. His treatise De 

 Mente Humana^ published in 1672, contains several chapters 

 of commentary upon Bacon's Philosophy ||. We are told by 

 Fontenelle, that Du Hamel was censured by his contempo- 

 raries, as not being sufficiently regardful of the merits of Des- 

 cartes §. With such views as he seems to have imbibed 

 from the writings of Bacon, he must, indeed, have been but 

 little disposed to look up to Descartes as the oracle of philo- 

 sophy* 



It 



* Birch's History of the Royal Society y vol. i. p. 27. 



•f- 8orbierre, Relation tfun Voyage en Angleterre. 



t " On peut dire que ce grand Chancelier est un de ceux qui ont les plus con- 

 iribue a Tavancement des sciences." — Journal des Savans, du 2. Mars, 1666. 



|| Lib. i. cap. 3. § 7. ; Lib. iii. cap. 6, 7, 8, 9. 



§ Fontenelle, Eloge de Du Hamel. 



