THE ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF NEWTON. 783 



of Aristotelian tradition. The seal, however, was broken ; the vase 

 was already at the bottom of the sea, and it only remained to guide 

 and propitiate a power which it was no longer possible to confine. 



The " Philosophical History," of which Hooke traced the gigantic 

 plan, would, in fact, have included what we now understand as the 

 whole body of inductive science, with a considerable margin of hetero- 

 geneous material, difficult of classification, and more curious, perhaps, 

 than useful. It would have included not only an enumeration of all 

 possible phenomena, but the knowledge of the laws by which they are 

 governed, and the causes by which they are produced. The natural 

 historian was to be " knowing in hypotheses," that he might set his 

 facts in plausible sequence of cause and effect ; he was to be a skilled 

 mechanician, and an able mathematician, that he might investigate 

 their relations by experiment, and deduce the consequences of such 

 relations by calculation. Hooke's " Helps of Discovery " are but an- 

 other form of Bacon's " Prerogative Instances " ; but it is significant 

 that in the later system they appear in the preparatory stage, while in 

 the earlier they form an integral part of the " Organum " itself. The 

 impossible was, in fact, relegated to a distant future, while the possible 

 took possession of the present. The " raising of axioms," and the dis- 

 covery of " forms," which were supposed to constitute the true business 

 of the philosopher, were postponed in favor of the more modest task of 

 setting facts in order, and connecting them by means of ideas. Thus 

 natural philosophy, in the recondite sense in which it was understood 

 by the theorists of the seventeenth century, came, as time went on, to 

 be more and more fully personated by her handmaiden, " Natural His- 

 tory," until at last the identity of the one was completely merged in 

 that of the other. The intermediary whom they had admitted as a 

 messenger of higher promise, they were compelled to take for better 

 for worse. Like Malvolio, they had wooed the mistress ; like Sir 

 Toby, they wedded the maid. 



We shall conclude our remarks on this singular essay by transcrib- 

 ing some specimens of the queries directed by Hooke to future inves- 

 tigators. Even after the lapse of above two centuries, they strike us 

 as suggestive and ingenious. Under the heading of " Ether," he asks : 



Whether it permeates all bodies, be the medium of light, be the fluid body in 

 which the air is but as a tincture? Whether it cause gravity, in the earth or 

 other celestial bodies? 



Of the atmosphere : 



Whether it encompasses the sun and planets, and that each of them have a 

 peculiar atmosphere, as well as they have a gravitating power? 



Whether the spots in the sun may not be clouds of smoke or vapors, raised 

 up into that atmosphere? 



Whether meteors have anything of fire in them, or whether the light may 

 not be an effect of their rapid motion ? 



