consciousness of its novelty as well as of its scope, is opposed to the
qualitative view of Aristotle;[2] the opinion that the essence of the human
spirit, as well as of the divine, nay, the essence of all things, consists
in activity; that, consequently, the soul is always active, being conscious
of its own harmony at least in a confused way, even when not conscious of
external proportions; further, the doctrine that nature loves simplicity,
avoids the superfluous, and is accustomed to accomplish large results with
a few principles--these remind one of Leibnitz. At the same time, the law
of parsimony and the methodological conclusions concerning true hypotheses
and real causes (an hypothesis must not be an artificially constructed set
of fictions, forcibly adjusted to reality, but is to trace back phenomena
to their real grounds), obedience to which enabled him to deduce _a priori_
from causes the conclusions which Copernicus by fortunate conjecture had
gathered inductively from effects--these made our thinker a forerunner of
Newton. The physical method of explanation must not be corrupted either
by theological conceptions (comets are entirely natural phenomena!) or by
anthropomorphic views, which endow nature with spiritual powers.

[Footnote 1: See Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften_, vol. i. p. 182 _seq_.; R.
Eucken, _Beiträge zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, p. 54 _seq_.]

[Footnote 2: Aristotle erred when he considered qualitative distinctions
(_idem_ and _aliud_) ultimate. These are to be traced back to quantitative
differences, and the _aliud_ or _diversum_ is to be replaced by _plus et
minus_. There is nothing absolutely light, but only relatively. Since
all things are distinguished only by "more or less," the possibility of
mediating members or proportions between them is given.]

Intermediate between Bacon and Descartes, both in the order of time and in
the order of fact, and a co-founder of modern philosophy, stands Galileo