TWO:The author of the Leviathan has sometimes been represented as one who carried the Baconian method into politics, and prepared the way for its more thorough application to psychology by Locke. But this view, which regards the three great leaders of English philosophy in the seventeenth century as successive links in a connected series, is a misapprehension of history, which could only have arisen through leaving out of account the contemporary development of Continental speculation, and through the inveterate habit of looking on the modern distinction between empiricism and transcendentalism as a fundamental antithesis dividing the philosophers of every epoch into two opposing schools. The truth is that, if the three writers just mentioned agree in deriving knowledge solely from experience, they agree in nothing else; and that their unanimity on this one point does not amount to much, will be evident if we consider what each understood by the notion in question.In every case where there can be a question as to whether gearing shafts or belts will be the best means of transmitting power, the several conditions named will furnish a solution if they are properly investigated and understood. Speed, noise, or angles may become determinative conditions, and are such in a large number of cases; first cost and loss of power are generally secondary conditions. Applying these tests to cases where belts, shafts, or wheels may be employed, a learner will soon find himself in possession of knowledge to guide him in his own schemes, and enable him to judge of the correctness of examples that come under his notice.
