1 April 1898 Friday

Began the College studies regularly.  At night read "The permanent pacification of the Indian Frontier" in the Nineteenth Century No. 25-2 by Major G. J. Younghusband.१२  Mr. Younghusband appears too young indeed to bother himself with political crafts.  He advises the 'complete disarmament' of the tribes as sovereign remedy to civilize them (into slaves) and the construction of metalled roads by free labour enforced from the tribes.  Not to mention . . . . . strain on poor India.  Mr. Younghusband seems too young to remember that the tribes are not yet conquered.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                म. शिंदे यांच्या प्रस्तुत रोजनिशीत त्यांनी त्यावेळी अभ्यासिलेल्या जी. एच. लेविस याच्या 'हिस्टरी ऑफ फिलॉसफी' या ग्रंथातील महत्त्वाचे उतारे लिहिलेले आहेत.  या संदर्भातील टीप पाहावी. -संपादक]

2nd April 98 Saturday
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.  (Page 115).  "A revolution"१३ says Dr. Whewell "was going on, as all the greatest investigators of the sixteenth century were fully aware.  But their writings conveyed this conviction to the public at large very slowly. -- But Bacon's lofty eloquence, wide learning, comprehensive views, bold picturres of coming state of things, were fitted to make men turn a far more general and earnest gaza upon the passing change." (Page 125).  He released Philosophy from the grip of Theology and made to depend upon wholly Science.  There was little novely in this denunciations of the erroneous Method then popular on in his exhortations to pursue Observation.  Experiment and Induction.  But it is not less apparent that he had wider and profounder views of the philosophy of Method than any of his predecessors-He insisted on the importance of Experiment, but he could not teach what he did not himself understand- the Experimental Method.  He exhorted men to study nature, but could give no available directions. -- He had fervent faith in the possible conqests of Science but never having thoroughly mastered any one science he was incapable of appreciating the real conditions of research.  Bacon did not understand what Copernicus profoundly saw that the only value of an hypothesis was its reconciliation of calculations with observations. (Pages 121, 122).  Bacon was a philosopher (rather than a scientist).  He is one of the most striking illustrations of the Literature of Power (rather than the Literature of Knowledge).  His distiugnishing characteristic is a large opulence of mind, at once massive and florid, wide-sweeping and subtle; and the main source of his influence has been the dignity with which he invested the objective mode of looking at things, a mode liable to degenerate into a creeping prosaism and trivial love of detail, a mode wanting also in the attractions of a facile, though illusory subjective tendency, but the only mode of reaching truth and securing- solid- results. (Page 123).

There was, and still is, an instinctive antagonism between philosophers and the savans : the philosophers complaning that Science is too narrow in its scope, the savans proclaiming that Philosophy is too vague in its principles.  Bacon was the first to conceive a Philosophy of the sciences.  He says, "But let none expect any great promotion of the sciences, especially in their effective part, unless natural philosophy be drawn out to particular sciences, and again, unless these particular sciences be brought back again to natural philosophy.  (Page 124).  By thus bringings Science out of its laborataries into the general field of thought, and by brining Philosophy out of its Schools into the workshops of reasearch, Bacon really introduced new era.  (Page 125).

He was so deeply impressed with a sence of the insufficiency of the Deductive Method alone, which he was his contemporaries pursuing, and which he knew to be tghe cause of the failure of his predecessors, that he bestowed all his attention to the Inductive Method.  (Page 134).  His deficiency in mathematical knowledge caused him to overlook the equal importance of Deduction and Induction." (Page 135).
(History of Philosophy. Lewes Vol.II Page 120).