340 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



vast provinces of nature and added them to the domain of science. 

 Bacon was a theorist, Gilbert an investigator. For eighteen years and 

 more he shunned the glare of society and the throbbing excitement of 

 public life; he wrenched himself away from all but the strictest 

 exigencies of his profession, in order to devote himself undistractedly to 

 the pursuit of science. And all this more than twenty years before the 

 apj)earance of Bacon's Novum Organum, the very work which contains 

 the philosopher's 'large thoughts and lofty phrases' on the value of ex- 

 periment as a means for the advancement of learning. During that 

 long period Gilbert haunted Colchester, where he delved into the secrets 

 of nature and prepared the materials for his grand work, De Magnete. 

 The publication of this Latin treatise made him known in the univer- 

 sities at home and especially abroad : he was appreciated by all the great 

 physicists and mathematicians of his age; by such men as Sir Kenelm 

 Digby; by William Barlowe, a great 'magneticall' man; by Kepler, the 

 astronomer, who adopted and defended his views; by Galileo himself, 

 who said: 'I extremely admire and envy the author of De Magnete/ 



If any one then deserves to be called the founder of the "experimental 

 school of philosophy, we contend that it is not Bacon the thinker and 

 essayist, but Gilbert the methodical worker and fruitful discoverer. 



The originality of Gilbert's work and the character of his dis- 

 coveries, together with the reputation which he enjoyed in the greater 

 seats of learning, ended by giving umbrage to Bacon, and the world saw 

 the strange spectacle of a great chancellor forgetting the teachings of 

 his own philosophy and becoming jealous. He even carried his ill feel- 

 ing so far as to write belittlingly of the conclusions of his illustrious 

 rival, saying in his De Augmentis Scientiarum that "Gilbert had at- 

 tempted a general system upon the magnet, endeavoring to build a ship 

 out of materials not sufficient to make the rowing-pins of a boat." 



It will be interesting to see what these 'rowing-pins' were, for then 

 we shall have a scale by which to judge the intensity of Bacon's jealousy 

 and the magnitude of his belittling ability. 



11. 



Gilbert's electrical work is contained in Book II of De Magnete; 

 and we may say at once that the second chapter of that famous book is 

 the first chapter on electricity ever written. Nothing was known be- 

 fore Gilbert's time save the attraction for light bodies observed in 

 rubbed amber and jet. 



Gilbert goes to work and devises an instrument to enable him to 

 study readily the electrical behavior of rubbed substances. He called 

 it a Versorium, we should call it an electroscope. "Make to yourself," 

 he says, "a rotating needle of any sort of metal three or four fingers 

 long and pretty light and poised on a sharp point." He then briskly 



