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Bacon, and are common to the upholders of realistic philosophy, who ever bear this Baconian stamp.

Now if things cannot be thought by means of intellectual and generic ideas, the symbols of which are words, nothing is left for us but to think by means of the senses and their impressions; and thus experience is limited to sensuous perception. "All knowledge is experience," says Empirism. "Experience is only sensuous perception," says Sensualism, which has its necessary foundation in the philosophy of experience, and already is clearly foreshadowed by Bacon.

And what are things-in-themselves*, if they exclude all generic universality, and are merely objects of our sensuous perceptions? They must be the reverse of genera-individuals of a material kind-that is to say, atoms. According to its positive principles, the nominalistic view is also atomistic. The atomistic view belongs to the very character of a philosophy that deliberately limits itself to experimentalising experience; avoids the abstract ideas of the intellect; approaches things themselves, instrument in hand, not to generalise the conceptions of bodies, but to dissect the bodies,

* It need scarcely be mentioned that "Ding-an-sich" (thing in itself) is a Kantian expression used to denote a thing in its own nature, independent of our perceptions.-J. O.

and reduce them to their ultimate parts. This direction has been unequivocally taken even by Bacon himself; and the further the realistic philosophy leaves Bacon behind, so much the more definite does the atomistic view become; so much the more clearly, unreservedly, and exclusively, is materialism revealed. This proceeds so far, that it at last gives atomistic explanations even of space and time, which it declares to be composed of simple elementary particles. The infinite divisibility of space and time is declared to be the greatest absurdity by the same thinker, who converts the Baconian philosophy into scepticism.

We shall find that the empirism founded by Bacon is heightened in its atomistic, sensualistic, and nominalistic tendencies, as it logically progresses, and that at last it resolves itself into scepticism.

THE DEGREES OF DEVELOPMENT IN EMPIRISM.

These are the leading points of view taken by the thinkers of the Baconian age. We shall clearly and concisely bring forward the principal characteristics of this age, merely marking those points in the progress of the Baconian philosophy that may really be considered developments*,

* "Fortbildungen;" literally" progressive formations, or elaborations."-J. O.

DEVELOPMENT OF BACONISM.

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whether they fulfil requisitions that Bacon has made, or carry out inquiries that he has stimulated; I mean such requisitions and such problems as immediately belong to the philosophical principles themselves. All these developments of the philosophy of experience have their roots in Bacon. To these roots we especially direct our attention here; firstly because they have not been sufficiently regarded, and the later advocates of realistic philosophy have been far too readily considered independent and peculiar thinkers than they really were; whereas, if they are compared to Bacon, they are nothing of the sort, or, at any rate, only to a very limited extent. Secondly, because we cannot better appreciate and understand these later results than by deducing them from their natural and historical origin, and, as it were, drawing them forth by the root out of the Baconian philosophy. Bacon himself, when he speaks of the method of instruction, makes the excellent remark that we cannot teach sciences better than by laying bare their roots to the learners.*

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I. THE ATOMISM OF HOBBES.

If we regard the Baconian philosophy in the direction which it took as opposed to antiquity and scholasticism, in the constitution which it adopted in conformity with that tendency, these points of view will appear most conspicuous: The sciences generally should be brought back to natural science as their foundation; -natural science should be based upon pure experience, and this, again, upon the natural understanding. Bacon had declared that natural science is the great parent of all the sciences; on this foundation, not only the physical disciplines, such as astronomy, optics, mechanics, medicine, &c., were to be renovated; but, "what will surprise many," the humanistic also, such as morals, politics, and logic. This was a demand made by Bacon,—and, indeed, he was compelled to make it by the very nature of his philosophy; - but which he himself only hinted at in morals, left unfulfilled in politics, while he expressly declared it was not to be fulfilled in the case of religion. Here is a gap within the precincts of the Baconian philosophy; and this consequently is the problem that has first to be solved. Bacon wished to be silent on the subject of politics; and religion, according to him, was to

THOMAS HOBBES.

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have nothing to do with natural knowledge. If we accurately formulise this problem, we shall find that in its broadest sense it insists that the moral world shall be explained on naturalistic principles, -that it shall be based on the natural state of man, and deduced from that basis, Hence we have the questions: "Which is the natural state of man ? How does the moral order of things result from it?" or, to speak the language of Bacon, "How does the status civilis' follow from the 'status naturalis' of man?" This problem is solved by Thomas Hobbes, the immediate successor and disciple of Bacon.

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He solves it altogether in the atomistic spirit of the Baconian philosophy. He becomes the politician of this tendency, and on political grounds detests the philosophers of antiquity with a violence still greater than that with which, on logical and physical grounds, they are opposed by Bacon. He wished to banish Plato and Aristotle from his state, as mischievous to the common weal, just as Plato from his republic would have banished Homer. In Hobbes the atomistic and nominalistic view is sharply and unscrupulously expressed, and that in reference to politics. All generic ideas are to him mere names and words; and these are nothing but conventional expedients for mutual Words," says Hobbes, says Hobbes," are wise

intercourse.

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