280 EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR. 



learned, the indigiuition excited by the seeming vagaries of a Par- 

 celsus, the fear and trembling lest the strange doctrine of Copernicus 

 should undermine the faith of centuries, were all helps to the germi- 

 nation of the seed — stimuli to thought which urged it on to explore 

 the new fields opened up to its occupation. This given, all that has 

 since followed came out in regular order of development, and need 

 be here considered only in those phases having a sjjecial relation to 

 the purpose of our present meeting. 



So slow was the growth at first that the sixteenth century may 

 scarcely have recognized the inauguration of a new era. Torricelli 

 and Benedetti were of the third generation after Leonardo, and 

 Galileo, the first to make a substantial advance upon his theory, was 

 born more than a century after him. Only two or three men ap- 

 peared in a generation Avho, working alone, coidd make real progress 

 in discovery, and even these could do little in leavening the minds 

 of their fellow-men with the new ideas. 



Up to the middle of the seventeenth century an agent which all 

 experience since that time shows to be necessary to the most pro- 

 iluctive intellectual activity was wanting. This was the attrition of 

 like minds, making suggestions to each other, criticising, comparing, 

 and reasoning. This element was introduced by the organizfltion 

 of the Royal Society of London and the Academy of Sciences of Paris. 



The members of these two bodies seem like ingenious youth sud- 

 denly thrown into a new world of inteivsting objects, the pur[)oses 

 and relations of which they had to discover. The novelty of the situ- 

 ation is strikingly shown in the questions which occupied the minds of 

 the incipient investigators. One natural result of British nuiritime 

 enterprise was that the aspirations of the Fellows of the Royal 

 Society were not confined to any continent or hemisphere. Inquiries 

 were sent all the way to Batavia to know " whether there be a hill 

 in Sumatra which burnetii continually and a fountain which runneth 

 pure balsam." The astronomical precision with which it seemed 

 possible that physiological operations might go on was evinced by 

 the inquiry whether the Lidians can so prepare that stupefying herb 

 Datura that " they make it lie several days, months, years, according 

 as they will, in a man s body without doing him any harm, and at the 

 end kill him witliout missing an hour's time." Of this continent one of 

 the incpiiries was whether there be a tree in Mexico that yields water, 

 wine, vinegar, milk, honey, wax, thread, and needh> . 



Among the problems before the I^iris Academy of Sciences those 

 of physiology and biology took a prominent place. The distillation 

 of conq)ounds had long been ])racticed, and the fact that the more 

 s})irituous elements of certain substances were thus separated natu- 

 rally led to the question whether the essential essences of life might not 

 be discoverable in the same way. In order that all might ]):irticipate 



