PURE SCIENCE AND THE IDEA OF THE HOLY 



urged by the great Comenius, became respectable. "I have often 

 thought it a great error, wrote Bishop Burnet, "to waste young gentle- 

 men's years so long in learning Latin by so tedious a grammar. I know 

 those who are bred to the professions in literature, must have the 

 Latin correctly. . . . But suppose a youth had, either for want of 

 memory or application, an incurable aversion to Latin, his education 

 is not for that to be despair'd of; there is much noble knowledge to 

 be had in the English and French languages; geography, history, 

 chiefly that of our own country, the knowledge of Nature, and the 

 more practical parts of the Mathematicks . . . may make a gentleman 

 very knowing, tho' he has not a word of Latin." 



But long before, in Francis Bacon's writings, that great man born 

 out of due time and languishing in an age just before the dawn, there 

 were constant indications of the practical outlook. In Valerius 

 Terminus^ for example: "And therefore it is not the pleasure of 

 curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor 

 the victory of wit, nor faculty of speech, nor lucre of profession, nor 

 ambition of honour or fame, nor inablement for business, that are 

 the true ends of knowledge; . . . but it is a restitution and re-investing 

 (in great part) of man to the sovereignty and power (for whensoever 

 he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names he shall again 

 command them), which he had in his first state of creation." And later, 

 "The dignity of this end, the endowment of man's life with new 

 commodities, appeareth by the estimation that antiquity made of such 

 as guided thereunto. For whereas founders of states, law-givers, 

 extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, were honoured but with 

 the titles of Worthies or Demigods, inventors were ever consecrated 

 among the Gods themselves." And again, in the Filum Labyrinthi^ 

 "He [Bacon himself] saw plainly, that this mark, namely invention of 

 further means to endow the condition and life of man with new 

 powers or works, was almost never yet set up and resolved in man's 

 intention and enquiry." 



These passages, among many others which could be quoted, 

 though indicating the traces of magical ideas which existed in the 

 Baconian concept of foolproof inductive methods, abundantly show 

 how central was his emphasis on the improvement of the lot of 

 mankind which science would achieve. A lonely figure, the "Bell that 

 called the Wits together" rang with very good effect. And the close 

 association of the Royal Society with trade and husbandry lasted on 



1 Works, ed. Ellis & Spedding, p. i88. ^ Ibid., p. 208. 



