Comparative Encouragement to the Study, <^c. 393 



misunderstood logic and metaphysics of the ancients. It was not 

 truth the schoolmen of that day sought for, but victory ; and 

 dialectic skill, the substance of which was an ingenious and ver- 

 bose sophistry, was the great accomplishment of the mmds of 



^^BufeTclesiastical domination of this character, was soon to 

 be put on the defensive. Wickliffe, by his translation of the 

 Scrfptures, gave a death-blow to the scholastic system: he laid 

 the foundatfon of a reformation in religion, by teachmg men how 

 to look into the sources of divine truths. Next came the age of 

 printing, of the Medici, of the learned and witty Erasmus, who 

 having been brought up by the schoolmen, knew them well. 

 Then followed Copernicus, Luther, the second Bacon, Galileo, 

 Kepler, and those great mathematicians and astronomers who 

 prepared the way of the physical sciences for the immortal 

 Newton. As this flood of light then impending over the human 

 mind advanced, the influence of the scholastic philosophy began o 

 decline. Luther had said, that neither religion or philosophy could 

 be reformed, until the system of metaphysical theology should be 

 abolished. Fifteen years after his death, arose the great intel- 

 lectual reformer. Lord Bacon. He taught that the qualities of 

 bodies are only to be known by experiment; and that m the 

 pursuit of knowledge, we must proceed step by step from what 

 we know, till we arrive at results governed by prmciples of uni- 

 versal application. His great mind disdained to occupy itself 

 with the relation of words with each other, which was the 

 system that had so long enslaved the human mind, but applied 

 its powers to the philosophical relation between words and 



* I?was in the early part of the sixteenth century, that fossil 

 organic remains began to attract the attention of the curious 

 and speculations to be indulged in concerning their ongm. But 

 these first eflforts in favour of natural history were restrained by 

 the same bigotry, which, at a later period, consigned Gahleo to 

 the dungeons of the inquisition. At first it was not permitted to 

 any one to attribute their origin, in relation to the situations in 

 which they are found, to any agency but that of the Noachic 

 deluge; men who reasoned otherwise, were pronounced mhdels, 

 and treated as such ; and when it was demonstrated that they 

 were occasionally found in situations where the Noachic deluge 

 Vol. I.— 50 



