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HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

III.

gentleman to have something to say about air-pumps and tele-scopes; and even fine ladies, now and then, thought it be-coming to affect a taste for science, went in coaches and sixto visit the Gresham curiosities, and broke forth into cries ofdelight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle,and that a microscope really made a fly look as large as asparrow. *

In this, as in every great stir of the human mind, there wasdoubtless something which might well move a smile. It is theuniversal law that whatever pursuit, whatever doctrine, be-comes fashionable, shall lose a portion of that dignity which ithad possessed while it was confined to a small but earnest mi-nority, and was loved for its own sake alone. It is true thatthe follies of some persons who, without any real aptitude forscience, professed a passion for it, furnished matter of con-temptuous mirth to a few malignant satirists who belonged tothe preceding generation, and were not disposed to unlearnthe lore of their youth.** But it is not less true that the greatwork of interpreting nature was performed by the English ofthat age as it had never before been performed in any age byany nation. The spirit of Francis Bacon was abroad, a spiritadmirably compounded of audacity and sobriety. There wasa strong persuasion .that the whole world was full of secrets ofhigh moment to the happiness of man, and that man had, byhis Maker, been intrusted with the key which, rightly used,would give access to them. There was at the same time a con-viction that in physics it was impossible to arrive at the know-ledge of general laws except by the careful observation of par-ticular facts. Deeply impressed with these great truths, theprofessors of the new philosophy applied themselves to their

* Pepys’s Diary, May 30.1661.

** Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who, between theRestoration and the Revolution, showed a bitter enmity to the new philo-sophy, as it was then called. See the Satire on the Royal Society, andthe Elephant in the Moon.