532 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing protest against their admission : " It is a fundamental rule of 

 the society not to meddle with religion ; and the reason is that we 

 may give no occasion to religious bodies to meddle with us"; 

 nor did the Fellows wish to " dissatisfy those of other religious 

 bodies" who did not share the views of the Christian Knowl- 

 edge Association. In the early days of the Philosophic Club, 

 when only a few intimate friends belonged to it, Robert Boyle, on 

 account of its smallness and lack of influence, often sportively 

 called it the Invisible College a name which, when this learned 

 junto had become large and important, was recalled with terror 

 by the enemies of the association, whether Aristotelians or re- 

 ligious bigots, who alike considered " the new experimental phi- 

 losophy subversive of the Christian faith." The newly invented 

 telescope and microscope were regarded by others besides igno- 

 rant fanatics with hatred and dread, as " atheistical inventions 

 which perverted our sight, and made everything appear in a new 

 and false light." 



The opponents of the Royal Society asserted that the principal 

 object that its supporters had in view was the extinction of uni- 

 versities, which were the strongholds of scholasticism and the- 

 ology. Yet this association was one of the chief interests in the 

 lives of many of the most devout and scholarly men of the seven- 

 teenth century. " Our holy religion " held the first place in their 

 hearts, though they considered the "new philosophy" second 

 in importance to Christianity. The imaginations and plans of 

 the society were magnificent, but they were never carried out. 

 The Fellows were fond of talking of their " universal correspond- 

 ence," which, in the near future, would keep their ten secretaries 

 who, however, were never elected, though the constitution pro- 

 vided for them hard at work ; and they loved to throw an air 

 of secrecy over their deliberations. These harmless vaunts and 

 concealments added to the panic which the virtuosi excited in 

 people who were ever dreading the establishment, openly or by 

 the treachery of the Jesuits, of popery and arbitrary power, and 

 led to the most unfounded suspicions and accusations. 



One of the most injurious things said against the society was 

 that its members were of the school of the Italian Campanella, 

 who, it was claimed, wished to identify church and state through- 

 out the world, and bring all nations under the power of a single 

 tyrannical ruler, and to that end would divert men from theol- 

 ogy and politics by occupying them with experimental philoso- 

 phy. Campanella's universal king, as soon as by trickery or by 

 some unaccountable and unexplained means he had firmly seated 

 himself on his throne, would, it was asserted, carry out the dear- 

 est object of the philosopher, and substitute everywhere the an- 

 cient pagan philosophic for the modern Christian sects. Probably 



