Descartes,-though it is now known to have no scientific value, has a mental value of the highest order: for (1) it reminds us again that the complete disclosure of a new truth by the principal discoverer is preceded by guesses, trials, and glimpses; and (2) it introduced the conception of natural law into what had long been the special realm of superstition.

In England, the intellectual impulse was in the same direction. Weeds and the grain often thrive and flourish together, but if Bacon set aside with scorn the astronomical system of Copernicus, he was the first to impress upon mankind at large, the power and importance of physical research. Through all those ages,' he says, 'wherein men of genius or learning principally or even moderately flourished, the smallest part of human industry has been spent on natural philosophy, though this ought to be esteemed as the great mother of the sciences; for all the rest, if torn from the root, may perhaps be polished and formed for use, but can receive little increase.' Many were undecided, Milton among others:

And:

"What if seventh to these

The planet earth, though steadfast she seem,
Insensibly three different motions move?'

· What if the sun

Be centre to the world; and other stars,
By his attractive virtue and their own
Incited, dance about him various rounds?'

His leaning, however, seems to have been for the new:

'Or she from west her silent course advance
With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps

On her soft axle, while she paces even,

And bears thee soft with the smooth air along?'

Many were knocking at the door which another and a later was to force open. In 1638 a book appeared with the title, The Discovery of a New World; two years afterward, a Discourse concerning a New Planet. The art of numerical calculation made inestimable progress by means of Napier's invention of Logarithms, without which the sciences in which the most splendid triumphs have been achieved, could never have been carried to the height they have reached. The circulation of the blood had been partially anticipated. Harvey completed the doctrine, demonstrated and announced it. It encountered as much popular as professional odium; but like the heliocentric doctrine,

'Untamed its pride, unchecked its course,

From foes and wounds it gathers force.'

This was the beginning of a revolution in medicine. In the ferment of the Civil War, some speculative persons formed themselves into a club, which they called the Invisible College, and met once a week, sometimes in London, sometimes in Oxford, according to the changes of fortune and residence of members. 'Our business,' says one of them, 'precluding affairs of state and questions of theology, was to consider philosophical subjects, and whatever related thereto,-physic, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, statics, magnetism, chemistry, mechanics, and natural experiments, with the state of these studies as then cultivated at home or abroad.'

A witness to the resistless tendencies of the age, is the celebrated work of Sir Thomas Browne - Inquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors. His enumeration of errors to be dispelled exemplifies the notions which prevailed:

That crystal is nothing else but ice strongly congealed; that a diamond is softened or broken by the blood of a goat; that a pot full of ashes will contain as much water as it would without them; that bays preserve from the mischief of lightning and thunder; that an elephant hath no joints; that a wolf, first seeing a man, begets a dumbness in him; that moles are blind; that the flesh of peacocks corrupteth not; that storks will only live in republics and free states; that the chicken is made out of the yolk of the egg; that men weigh heavier dead than alive; that the forbidden fruit was an apple; that there was no rainbow before the Flood; that John the Evangelist should not die.'

6

'Many others there are,' he adds, 'which we resign unto divinity, and perhaps deserve not controversy.' We are here informed that one main cause of error is 'adherence unto authority'; that another is neglect of inquiry'; that a third is 'credulity.' All which is confirmatory of that vast social and intellectual movement which we have seen sweep away the institutions that vainly attempted to arrest it, and which was steadily introducing a new series of conceptions into every province of speculative and practical life.

Philosophy. The sterile empire of scholasticism was at an end. The sound of great names had lost its omnipotent charm. Speculators felt the need of a law and a law-giver to methodize the discordant elements, but pursued no determinate course, while pretenders struggled for the vacant throne. At this juncture a leader appeared - Francis Bacon, who set aside the traditions of the past, separated philosophy from theology, and in

a large and noble temper called the attention of mankind to the power and importance of experimental research. While his own researches lay chiefly in the domain of physical science, yet the spirit of his method-slow and patient investigation was one which applied equally to the whole realm of knowledge. More clearly than any other, he saw where the error of the ancients lay,-in making the largest generalizations first, without the aid or warrant of rigorous inductive methods, and applying them deductively without verification. But the revolt from this waste of intelligence, as well as his ignorance of mathematical knowledge, blinded him to the real value of deduction as an instrument of discovery. His influence, however, especially on the development of science, was decisive, if not immediate. His fundamental maxim― excellent though not without its dangers-suited the English positive, practical genius,—that philosophy should begin in observation and end in art:

In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works, we may freely apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works, accounting that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistles and thorns of dispute and contention?'

What is that world? What is man? What is the origin of knowledge? What are its limits? How can it be increased? From what principles must we start? What methods are we to employ? What rule shall we deduce for the conduct of life? Το answer these questions is the dark problem of metaphysics, to which Bacon, from the bent of his genius, was no way addicted. On the continent a Frenchman, Descartes, gave an answer which, while it has ceased to be satisfactory, formed the starting-point of much English speculation, though he himself made no distinguished disciples among English thinkers. Turning the mental vision inward, as Bacon turned it outward, he watched the operations of the soul, as an object in a microscope. Resolved to believe nothing but upon evidence so convincing that he could not by any effort refuse his assent, he found, as he inspected his beliefs, that he could plausibly enough doubt everything but his own existence. Here at last was the everlasting rock, and

1 Mechanics, astronomy, optics, acoustics, involve a deductive element. Each supposes the law to be so and so, that is, devises an hypothesis, and inquires what consequences will follow, always with the design of trying such results by facts, and adopting the hypothesis only when it can stand the test. From a principle thus established a multitude of truths are deduced by the mere application of geometry and algebra.

this was revealed in his own Consciousness. Hence his famous Cogito, ergo sum,-I think, therefore I am. Consciousness, said he, is the basis of certitude. Interrogate it, and its clear replies will be science; for all clear ideas are true. Down in the depths of self, he tells you, is the distinct immutable idea of the Infinite Perfection the mark of the workman impressed upon his work; therefore, God exists. This fact established, the veracity of our faculties is guaranteed; for an Infinite and Perfect Being would not so constitute His creatures that they should be always and essentially deceived. His method of ascent to the basis of truth was inductive; thenceforth, from that irreversible Certainty, it was deductive. He was greatest in that in which Bacon was least, mathematics. The latter argued from effects to causes; the former deduced effects from causes-explaining the phenomena of sense by those of intuition. The one used experiment to verify an a priori conception; the other, to form conceptions.

Against the prosaic, earthy temper of the next period, when Philosophy shall turn her face earthward, the mind be plotted out into real estate, and grandeur become a thing unknown, let us hold in remembrance the sublime words of Sir Thomas Browne on the true dignity and destiny of man as the highest sublunary object of our theoretical and moral interest. This poet-philosopher shall give us the last accents of the great Elizabethan age:

For the world, I count it not an inn but an hospital, and a place, not to live but to die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. . . . The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part within us; that mass of flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind; that surface that tells the heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me I have any: . . . whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm or little world, I find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me I am the image of God, as well as Scripture; he that understands not thus much, hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man.'

Résumé.-The opinions and feelings that had been growing up in the bosom of private families now manifested themselves in Parliamentary debates, then overturned the throne, and instituted the Commonwealth. Against the loyal enthusiasm of English gentry, and the fierce licentiousness of Royalist reprobates, were arrayed the valor, the policy, and the public spirit of the

Puritans, with their severe countenance, precise garb, petty scruples, and affected accent. Out of the struggle sprang into organized existence two great parties,-standing the one for political tradition, the other for political progress; the one for religious conformity, the other for religious liberty.

In the drama, the noonday of Shakespeare was followed by the afternoon flush of Jonson, the delineator of humors, and a semi-classic in taste; of Beaumont and Fletcher, luxuriating in irregularity of form, and heralding the sensual excess that ended in the violent extinction of the art; of Massinger, Ford, and the rest of that bright throng, whose final and almost solitary successor was Shirley.

ucts.

Having reached the limit of its expansion, the poetic bloom withered. The serious temper, the blast of strife, the ascetic gloom, accelerated the decay which natural causes began. The agreeable replaced the forceful; and the pretty, the beautiful. Donne founded the fantastic or metaphysical school, marked by the love of quaint phrases, strange analogies, and ambitious efforts at antithesis. Poets lost the romantic fervor without gaining the classic grace. Yet in this exhausted soil, the old sap, lost to the eye, sent up one more of its most vigorous prodProse was unexampled in vigor and amount; most of it in particular during the Civil War-political and theological, inspired by the rage of sects and factions, meant for the ravenous appetites of the moment, and therefore ephemeral. A few notable books—like the Areopagitica of Milton, those of Taylor, the Spenser of theology, of Bacon, the diviner in science, and of Browne, the dreamer of Norwich-glow with the colored lights and the heart of fire which give to the productions of genius enduring life. Style was copious, even to redundancy; ornate, even to intemperance; not seldom pedantic, with blemishes of vulgarity and tediously prolonged periods. We do not look for grace in Leviathans, nor for urbanity in mastodons.

The scholastic dynasty, which had survived revolutions, empires, religions, and languages, was fallen. Into the ensuing anarchy Bacon introduced the principle of order, and furnished to liberated thought a chart and compass. His preeminent service was his classification of the Idola, and his constant injunction to correct theory by confronting it with facts. In him, and in