and these sophistries during their sway fostered superstitions 

 that inflicted much misery on mankind, which was gradually 

 being prepared for the appreciation of a rational philosophy 

 and the benefits flowing from its practical applications. 



The decline of the follies which had attached themselves 

 to the sciences like barnacles to a ship's bottom, progressed 

 in the ratio in which truths were revealed by experimenters 

 in the several fields; workers with telescopes, microscopes, 

 dissecting knives, ^retorts, balances, thermometers, barometers, 

 and somewhat later, with air-pumps and electrical machines, 

 strove to interpret the phenomena of nature, instead of blindly 

 following dogmatic assertions made in by-gone ages, and 

 applied to the accumulating observations the principles of the 

 inductive philosophy, thus brushing away the barnacles that 

 befouled the ship of science, long anchored in sluggish waters, 

 so that with polished sides and favoring breezes she glided 

 rapidly through the channels of reason into the harbor of 

 truth. To enumerate the superstitions abandoned one by one, 

 would be superfluous; the progress towards truth is better 

 reviewed by describing the instruments used to free the vessel 

 from obstructions, to-wit, the influences that effected the im- 

 proved conditions and speeded the boat towards her destina- 

 tion. 



The sixteenth century witnessed some of the most moment- 

 ous events in the history of the world and gave birth to men 

 of superior intellectual endowments ; the discovery of America 

 at the close of the preceding century prepared the way for 

 its exploration and occupation in the sixteenth, opening up 

 new fields of enterprise to the old world; the Reformation 

 established the liberty of conscience and revived an evangeli- 

 cal spirit of Christianity ; though the invention of printing 

 dated from the middle of the fifteenth century, the wonderful 

 power of the printing press in the diffusion of knowledge 



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