THE ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF NEWTON. 679 



brilliant school of thought to which belonged Ramus, Patricius, and 

 Bruno. His relations were far closer with the Cosentine than with the 

 Lyncean Academy. As far as he was the disciple of any man, he was 

 the disciple of Telesius, its founder. Although his name was com- 

 monly associated with that of the Tuscan astronomer as inventor of 

 the philosophy of nature, he was in reality the English Campanella 

 rather than the English Galileo. He was Campanella with a sounder 

 understanding, a deeper insight, and a larger humanity. To Campa- 

 nella's prophetic zeal he united incomparable practical sagacity. He 

 not only preached a millennium of universal knowledge, but endeav- 

 ored to guide men's halting footsteps toward the goal, and to bridge 

 the gulf between the future toward which he pointed and the present 

 to which he belonged. Hence his profound and persistent design was 

 to establish a method, not to found a school. The message that he had 

 it in him to deliver related to men's works, not to their thoughts. His 

 speculative teaching not only was subordinate to his physical precepts, 

 but was suggested by them, and displays the characteristic defects 

 due to such an origin. 



Thus his intellectual progeny divided itself into two classes those 

 who developed the philosophical principles implied rather than pro- 

 fessed in his writings, and those who adopted, or endeavored to adopt, 

 the scientific method of which the " Novum Organum " exhibits the 

 majestic torso. Among the first we reckon Hobbes, Locke, and Hume 

 in this country, and abroad, Bayle, Condillac, and the Encyclopedists 

 all of whom, while setting themselves problems which Bacon had 

 ignored, and solving them, for the most part, after a fashion which 

 Bacon would have repudiated, carried out, nevertheless, to their ex- 

 treme conclusions doctrines in some degree countenenced by his great 

 name. To the second class belonged Boyle, Hooke, Wren, and the 

 other early members of the Royal Society. These men inherited the 

 labors and the spirit of those who had worked while Bacon taught 

 of Harriot, Gilbert, Napier, and Harvey ; but they were born while 

 the air still vibrated to the mighty words of Verulam. They then en- 

 rolled themselves under the banner which he had unfurled, and silently 

 followed the examples which he had condemned. They identified him 

 with a system which he had disowned, and with acclamation proclaimed 

 him leader of a movement which he had emphatically declared to be 

 unfruitful. While professing to follow where he led, they in truth 

 carried his authority captive with them along the paths they them- 

 selves chose. This, indeed, was the result, not of insubordination, but 

 of necessity. They were compelled to seek a modus vivendi between 

 the conflicting claims of Nature and her interpreter, and they found 

 the conciliation that they sought not very far from the modest courses 

 of their predecessors. 



It is not too much to say that what was distinctive in Bacon's sys- 

 tem was impracticable, and that what was practicable was already 



