CHAPTER VI 



CONCLUSION 



The assigned task is now finished. The new science has been 

 characterized, its activities have been traced briefly along the 

 various lines of interest, and its contributions of new ideas to 

 English thought have been summarized. The struggle of these 

 new ideas with the "ancient faith ", with an outworn poetic 

 imagery, with the claims of pseudo-science, with the power of 

 scholastic authority, and with the credulity of superstition, has 

 been presented, in so far as it found literary expression. An ex 

 ploitation of this new interest as a humor that filled the minds of 

 men and women with foolish whimsies was discovered in the satiric 

 comedies. In verse, the new philosophy fell into the grasp of the 

 satirists, whose treatment much resembled that of comedy; but, 

 later, certain poets were led through a sense of piety to find the 

 extended horizon of the new astronomy, while others began to look 

 upon external nature, like the virtuosi, with the wondering eyes 

 of children. In prose, there was an early and enthusiastic literary 

 expression of the new discoveries by the scientists themselves, that 

 soon lost its vigor. Satire took its place, that, like comedy, exag 

 gerated the absurdities of the new interest. Gradually the in 

 quiries of natural science > were differentiated from _speculalrtTe^fei:l- 

 osophy and theology ; science developed a literature of its own 

 wherein "the graces were tacitly excluded". "An age of scientific 

 discovery till then unexampled passed away without enriching 

 literature by a single classic", 1 but natural science made for itself 

 a place of dignity and respect among the other branches of human 

 thought. 



The new science was found to be a new intellectual impulse 

 that set men at work reconstructing the natural history of the 

 world by means of experiment and observation. Attention was 

 thereby called to the objective forms of nature and interest was 

 centered upon the affairs of secular life. The day of specialization 

 was dawning; the new philosophers, who began, like Bacon, with 

 the whole province of human knowledge, steadily narrowed their 



1 Garnett, Richard, The Age of Dryden, p. 266. 



