ich has produced modern science. And
modern science has, in its brief but marvellous career of three
centuries, altered the face of the globe. It has taught man
more than ancient science did in all the preceding centuries;
it has touched even our deepest faiths.

Whether its success has been due mainly to the abstract
reasoners like Copernicus and the philosophers, or to the
practical experimenters like Galileo and Harvey, is perhaps
scarcely a practical question.

In the evolution of philosophy, as in the evolution of an organism, it
is impossible to fix with any precision a period of origin, because
every beginning is also a termination, and presumes the results of a
whole series of preceding evolutions. As Mr. Spedding felicitously says,
our philosophy "was born about Bacon's time, and Bacon's name, as the
brightest which presided at the time of its birth, has been inscribed
upon it:

"Hesperus that led
The starry host rode brightest."

"Not that Hesperus did actually lead the other stars; he and they were
moving under a common force, and they would have moved just as fast if
he had been away; but because he shone brightest, he looked as if he led
them." Bacon and Descartes are generally recognized as the "Fathers of
Modern Philosophy," though they themselves were carried along by the
rapidly swelling current of their age, then decisively setting in the
direction of science. It is their glory to have seen visions of the
coming greatness, to have expressed in terms of splendid power the
thoughts which were dimly stirring the age, and to have sanctioned the
new movement by their authoritative genius. The destruction of
scholasticism was complete. They came to direct the construction of a
grander temple.

There are in these two thinkers certain marked features of resemblance,
and others equally marked of difference. We see their differences most
strikingly in their descendants. From Bacon lineally descended Hobbes,
Locke, Diderot, D'Alembert, Condillac, Cabanis, and our Scotch school.
From Descartes descended Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel. The inductive method predominated in one school,
the deductive in the other. These differences we shall recognize more
fully later on; at present we may fix our minds on the two great points
of resemblance: 1st, the decisive separation of philosophy from
theology; 2d, the promulgation of a new