THE NEW SCIENCE AND PROSE 153 



as its title implies, was written to carry forward the work of re 

 constructing the natural history of England after Bacon's man 

 ner. It is filled with the author's observations of curiosities and 

 phenomena in Staffordshire. There is, however, no attempt at 

 style ; for the most part it is a mere catalogue. For the reader of 

 today who knows Gilbert White's Natural History of Selbome it is 

 dry and stupid. The Sculptura and Acetaria of Evelyn have al 

 most as much right to be classed among the works of literature as 

 Silva. But they are manifestly inferior to that book and illus 

 trate no new literary expression of science. Their titles indicate 

 with sufficient clearness the fields of interest out of which they 

 were harvested. Ray's Wisdom of God, also, has some claim to at 

 tention. Just as certain poets, filled with piety, found new emo 

 tion in the revelations of astronomy, just as Newton sought to 

 prove the existence of a God from his new system of the world, 

 so the observers of the structure and relationship of plants and 

 animals, the discoverers of the wonderful mechanism in even the 

 most minute forms, found reason to proclaim the "wisdom of 

 God". Of this number was Ray, the botanist. The purpose of 

 his book was primarily theological and it falls into its proper place 

 in the development of the ideas of the systemists, who have as their 

 eloquent spokesmen, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Pope. 19 



English literature in any narrowed sense can hardly claim the 

 prose works of the greatest scientist of the period, Sir Isaac New 

 ton. The Principia, his most important work, was written or 

 iginally in Latin according to the custom of learned men of his 

 time. Optics has no pretensions to literary expression; it is mere 

 ly a bald statement of experiments and demonstrations. The fam 

 ous Letters to Eentley are less cold and rigid, but are directed to 

 ward theology, where "he argues an intelligent agent from the 

 discovered motions of the planets". Newton passed over wholly 

 within the realms of theology in such a work as Observations on the 

 Prophecy of Daniel. The new science, of course, followed him 

 thither, for it had become a part of his habit of thought. And 



19 The most complete investigation into the problem of the deists was made by 

 Joseph Butler in his Analogy (1736). The new science contributed to this whole 

 theological discussion (1) the search for natural causes, and (2) the new conception 

 of the physical world. Butler's Analogy is a criticism on the attempts to prove by 

 a posteriori methods the existence of a God. 



