220 Notice of British Naturalists. 
confine ourselves to that portion of the world; with an occa- 
sional glance, but only incidental, at other countries, as our plan 
is restricted within narrow limits. We shall at the same time, 
give short sketches of the lives of such as have been peculiarly 
devoted to this science, for its own sake. In this view, science is 
in our utilitarian age more neglected in the present, than in some 
former periods of its history. Men are too much taken up in at- 
tempting to promote the minor arts. The philosophical spirit is 
too much banished; that spirit, which Bacon has characterized 
as the germ of life in the sciences. Hoping to be ourselves guided 
by this spirit, we shall not however abstain from introducing ap- 
posite proofs of the usefulness of the knowledge and study of 
natural history. 
The state of science towards the close of the sixteenth cel- 
tury, presented a field of observation singularly calculated to at- 
tract the curiosity and awaken the genius of Bacon. : 
“One of the considerations which appears most forcibly to 
have impressed itself upon his mind, was the vagueness and un- 
certainty of all the physical speculations then existing, and the 
entire want of connection between the sciences and the arts. 
Those things are in their nature so closely united, that the same 
truth which is a principle in science, becomes a rule in art; yeh 
there was at that time hardly any practical improvement which 
had arisen from a theoretical discovery. The natural alliance 
between the knowledge and the power of man, seemed entirely 
interrupted ; nothing was to be seen of the mutual support which 
they ought to afford the one to the other. ‘The improvement of 
art was left to the slow and precarious operation of chance, and 
that of science, to the collision of opposite opinions.”* 
To use Bacon’s own words in his Advancement of Lear ning * 
“As things now are, if an untruth in nature be once on foot, 
what by reason of the neglect of examination, and countenance 
of antiquity, and what by reason of the use of opinion in simil- 
itudes and ornaments of speech, it is never called down.” 
But there was still another circumstance which, in a pee 
manner, attracted his attention—the neglect then prevalent of 
ordinary, and the thirsty zeal for extraordinary objects. What 18 
immediately before us, and of every day occurrence, howevet 
ea 
uliar 
* Professor Playfair. 
