THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



APRIL, 1901. 



MALPIGHI, SWAMMEKDAM AND LEEUWENHOEK. 



By Professor WILLIAM A. LOCY, 



NORTH WKSTERN UNIVERSITY. 



AS Cuvier justly remarks, the seventeenth century was a fruitful 

 one for science. It was then that the method of investigating 

 nature by direct observation and experiment was reestablished. After 

 the long period of intellectual decline, the mental life of mankind was 

 to be lifted again to the level it had attained in the age of the highest 

 development of Greek philosophy. The complete arrest of inquiry into 

 the domain of nature and the adherence to tradition had lasted so long 

 that the faculty of testing and experimeting seemed to be almost 

 extinct. The unfriendliness of the ecclesiastics and other intellectual 

 authorities to investigation, and the dire consequences to the individual 

 of a movement towards intellectual freedom, served to repress the nat- 

 ural desire of the human intellect for a knowledge of itself and the 

 universe. Any one who broke over the restraints went against every 

 appeal to self-interest, and deserved much credit for independence and 

 courage. 



Nevertheless, in this untoward atmosphere the spirit of unbiased 

 inquiry was awakened through the efforts of a few independent minds; 

 among these select few, who, as pioneers in the revival of exact science, 

 have an enduring interest for all educated people, we must remember 

 Malpighi, Swammerdam and Leeuwenhoek. Although their work 

 marks an epoch, they were not the only pioneers, nor the first ones; 

 Vesalius, Galileo, Harvey and Descartes had started the reform move- 

 ment in which our triumvirate so worthily labored. 



VOL. LVIII.— zc< 



