280 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Jan. 



more than the elaboration of the thoughts of their predecessors. 

 In Metaphysics — which had claimed even a larger share of the 

 attention of the scholars of antiquity — little progress had been 

 made. Perhaps I am justified in saying little progress was 

 possible, inasmuch as in the light of all the great material dis- 

 coveries of modern times the metaphysicians of the present day are 

 debating, with as little harmony of opinion, the same questions 

 that divided the rival schools of the Greeks. Each successive 

 generation has had its two parties of idealists and realists, who 

 have discussed the intangible problems which absorbed the great 

 minds of Plato and Aristotle with a degree of enthusiasm and 

 energy — and it may be of acrimony — which seems hardly com- 

 pensated by any expansion of the human intellect or amelioration 

 of the condition of mankind. 



Of the Physical Sciences we may say that, except Astronomy, 

 no one had an existence prior to the time of Bacon. There were 

 men of vast learning, and much that was called science in the mass 

 of reported observation that had been accumulating from century 

 to century, until it had become " rudis indigestaque moles," in 

 which — though it constituted the pride of universities, the intel- 

 lectual capital with which the savant thought himself rich, and 

 that on which the professional man depended for success — there 

 was far more error than truth, and its study was sure to mislead 

 and likely to injure. In these circumstances the task before the 

 scientific reformer was one far more difficult than that of clearing 

 the Augean stables ; no less, in fact, than to seat himself before 

 this great heap of rubbish, this mass of truth and error, — of the 

 sublimest philosophy with the wildest fiction, — to patiently winnow 

 out the grains of truth, and from infiniteismal facts build up a 

 fabric that should have a sure foundation below, and beauty and 

 symmetry above. What more natural, then, than that the process 

 adopted in winnowing this chaff-heap should be that which had 

 given success to the only true science of the period ? — that the 

 mathematical touchstone should be the test by which every grain 

 was tried ? And such precisely was the course pursued ; perhaps 

 we may even say the only one practicable. Provided with this 

 test, the reformer was compelled to rejudge upon its merits every 

 proposition submitted to him, and accepted only as true such ss 

 could be demonstrated. The materials which composed the 

 science to be reformed naturally fell into several categories. 

 First — That which had been demonstrated to be true. Second, 



