[535] For Gilbert de la Porrée see Hauréau, I., chap. xviii.
[536] Jourdain, Recherches critiques sur les Traductions latines d’Aristote.
[537] The term Nominalist is here used in the wide sense given to it by Hauréau. See the last chapter of his work on the Scholastic Philosophy.
[538] Works I., p. 405 in Ellis and Spedding’s edition.
[539] ‘Historia naturalis ... materia prima philosophiae.’ De Aug., II., iii.
[540] The ‘notions and conceptions’ of the Advancement of Learning (Works, III., p. 356) is rendered by ‘axiomata’ in the De Augmentis (I., p. 567), where in both instances the question is entirely about Forms. Cp. § 8 of Prof. Fowler’s Introduction to the Novum Organum.
[541] Analyt. Prior., II., xxx.
[542] Prof. Bain, after mentioning that the second book of the Topics ‘sets forth in a crude condition the principal canons of inductive logic,’ goes on to say that ‘these statements cannot be called germs for they never germinated’ (Grote’s Minor Works, p. 14). May they not have germinated in the Novum Organum?
[543] Descartes showed a much deeper insight into the scientific conditions of industrial progress than Bacon. His words are, ‘On peut trouver une philosophie pratique par laquelle connoissant la force et les actions du feu, de l’eau, de l’air, des astres, des cieux, et de tous les autres corps qui nous environnent, aussi distinctement que nous connoissons les divers mestiers de nos artisans, nous les pourrions employer en même façon à tous les usages auxquels ils sont propres, et ainsi nous rendre comme maistres et possesseurs de la Nature.’ Discours de la Méthode, Sixième Partie. This passage has been recently quoted by Dr. Bridges (‘Comte’s Definition of Life,’ Fortnightly Review for June 1881, p. 684) to illustrate what seems a very questionable position. He says that the Copernican astronomy, by revealing the infinitude of the universe, made men despair of comprehending nature in her totality, and thus threw them back on enquiries of more directly human interest and practical applicability; particularly specifying ‘the lofty utilitarianism of the Novum Organum and of the Discours de la Méthode,’ as ‘one of the first concomitants’ ‘of this intellectual revolution.‘ There seems to be a double misconception here: for, in the first place, Bacon could hardly have been influenced by a theory which he persistently rejected; and, in the next place, neither Bacon nor Descartes showed a trace of the positivist tendency to despair of attaining absolute and universal knowledge. Both of them expected to discover the inmost essences of things; and neither of them imagined that a different set of conditions might come into play outside the boundaries of the visible universe. In fact they believed themselves to be enlarging instead of restricting the field of mental vision; and it was from this very enlargement that they anticipated the most momentous practical results. It was with Locke, as we shall see hereafter, that the sceptical or agnostic movement began. In this same article, Dr. Bridges repeats, probably on Comte’s authority, the incredible statement that ‘Thales taught the Egyptian priests those two or three elementary truths as to the laws of triangles, which enabled them to tell the height of the pyramid by measuring its shadow.’ Comte’s ignorance or carelessness in relating this story as a well-attested fact was long ago noticed with astonishment by Grote. (Life of George Grote, p. 204.)
[544] Whewell notices this ‘Stationary Interval’ (History of the Inductive Sciences, Bk. XVI., chapter iii., sect. 3), but without determining either its just limits or its real cause.