GILBERT OF COLCHESTER. 339 



On one occasion, lie hears that Baptista Porta, whom he calls 'a 

 philosopher of no ordinar}^ note/ said that a piece of iron rubbed with 

 a diamond turns to the north. He suspects this to be heresy. So, 

 forthwith he proceeds to test the statement by experiment. He was 

 not dazzled by the reputation of Baptista Porta; he respected Porta, 

 but respected truth even more. He tells us that he experimented with 

 seventy-five diamonds in presence of many witnesses, employing a num- 

 ber of iron bars and pieces of wire, manipulating them with the greatest 

 care while they floated on corks; and he concludes his long and ex- 

 haustive research by plaintively saying: "Yet never was it granted me 

 to see the effect mentioned by Porta." 



Though it led to a negative result, this probing inquiry was a 

 masterpiece of experimental work. 



Gilbert incidentally regrets that the men of his time "are deplorably 

 ignorant with respect to natural things,"' and the only way he sees to 

 remedy this is to make them "quit the sort of learning that comes only 

 from books and that rests only on vain arguments and conjectures," 

 for he shrewdly remarks that "even men of acute intelligence without 

 actual knowledge of facts and in the absence of experiment easily fall 

 into error." 



Acting on this intimate conviction, he labored for eighteen years 

 over the theories and experiments which he sets forth in his great 

 work on the magnet. "There is naught in these books," he tells us, 

 "that has not been investigated, and again and again done and repeated 

 under our eyes." He begs any one that should feel disposed to chal- 

 lenge his results to repeat the experiments for himself "carefulh', skil- 

 fully and deftly, but not heedlessly and bunglingly." 



It has often been said that we are indebted to Sir Francis Bacon, 

 Queen Elizabeth's Chancellor, for the inductive method of studjing 

 the phenomena of nature. This is an error, for all investigators em- 

 ployed it from Archimedes the Syracusan down to Gilbert, the contem- 

 porary of Lord Yerulam.* Bacon's merit lies in the fact that he not 

 only minutely analyzed the method, pointing out its uses and abuses, 

 but also that he admitted it to be the onlv one bv which we can attain 

 an accurate knowledge of the physical world around us. His senten- 

 tious eulogy went forth to the world of scholars invested with all the 

 importance, authority and dignity which the high position and world- 

 wide fame of the philosophic Chancellor could give it. But while 

 Bacon thought and wrote in his study, Gilbert labored and toiled in his 

 worksliop. By his quill. Bacon made a profound impression on the 

 philosophic mind of his age; by his researches, Gilbert explored two 



"'' Bacon was raised to the peerage as Baron Verulam, and was subsequently 

 created Viscount St. Albans ; where, then, is the propriety of calling him Lord 

 Bacon ? 



