English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth.

  • James Seth
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    51/392 (page 35)
    ments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath com¬ mitted so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations and profitable inventions and discoveries—the best state of that province.’ And in the Preface to the Novum Organum he says : c I suppose that I have established for ever a true and lawful marriage between the empirical and the rational faculty, the unkind and ill-starred divorce of which has thrown into confusion all the affairs of the human family.’ The true method of knowledge is the Interpretation, the false method is the Anticipation of nature. We must derive our notions from the facts of experience, not deduce the facts from our preconceived notions. We must come to nature with an open mind, with the docility of the little child; for the kingdom of knowledge, like the kingdom of heaven, is entered only sub persona infantis. Instead of seeing in things-the reflection of ourselves, and interpreting the world after the analogy of man, we must be content to let our minds reflect the nature of things, and to interpret them after the analogy of the universe. Bacon’s conception of knowledge is that it is the copy or reproduction of reality ; the mind—the sense and the intellect—is, or may become, a true mirror of things. The error, the distortion of reality, results from our refusal to observe with sufficient care, and to be content with the discovery of the order of things as that order is revealed to careful observation and experiment. ‘ All depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed on the facts of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are. For God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world ; rather may He graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on His creatures.’1 But there are certain defects in the mind as a mirror of the world, defects partly innate, partly adventitious. 1 Nov. Org, Plan of the Work, pp. 32, 33.