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bub those who assert this forget that Paracelsus, Rabelais, 

 Montaigne had dealt mortal blows to the Schoolmen long before 

 Bacon ! Bacon, on returning from Paris — a philosophical 

 fledgling — stood up as a champion of science. He took his cue 

 from Kamus in two particulars (1) In asserting the worthlessness 

 of Aristotle's logic ; (2) In inventing a new logic. He dis- 

 paraged Aristotle in the tone of one who had made a discovery. 

 He inveighed against the Schoolmen in the tone of one who was 

 first to take the field against them. Be declared in the most 

 impressive tone that science and art were in sore plight ; that 

 science had stood still for twenty centuries ; that nothing was ad- 

 vancing ; that observations must be made, instruments must be 

 used, experiments recurred to ; that new principles must be 

 adopted ; that he himself had found a remedy to the evil and a 

 key to a new era. 



Had there been a standstill ? Was the remedy he offered 

 new ? Readers will find ample answers to these two questions in 

 " Progress of Science." Suffice it to say for the present that 

 twenty-three Greek scientists had appeared since Aristotle, and 

 they had made no less than eighty discoveries. When it is remem- 

 bered that Archimedes, Aristarchus, Eratosthenes,and Hipparchus 

 are included among the Greek alluded to, and that the pre- 

 cession of the equinoxes, the law of hydroscatics, are among 

 their discoveries, we can well wonder at Bacon's assertion. Next 

 to the Greeks came forty Arabian scientists — among them Giaber, 

 Al Hazen, Avicenna, and Averroes — whose discoveries in 

 chemistry, physics, medicines, &c., amount to a total of 98. Next 

 to them came 64 medieval men of science whose discoveries 

 amount to 137. So that since Aristotle's time there had 

 appeared 126 scientific men, and there had been 315 discoveries 

 made. Every science was founded — founded on experience be it 

 noted — and all our modern branches descend from those 

 great men and their discoveries without a break. It was at such 

 a time that Francis Bacon stepped on the scene and proclaimed 

 himself the herald of science " Our only hope," he said (Nov. Org., 

 I., 97) "is iu the regeneration of sciences by regularly raising 

 them on the foundation of experience, and building them anew, 

 which I think none can venture to afiirm to have been already 

 done or even thought of." 



We see the value of his assertion ; we see the error of his bio- 

 graphers, when they assure us that Bacon appeared at a time of 

 profound darkness and brought light to illumine the world of 

 science. We see the great mistake they make by asserting, as 



