GILBERT AND ARISTOTLE. 275 



the magnet from the atmosphere of mysticism which sur- 

 rounded it : but because, in celebrating the man, it like- 

 wise celebrated the beginning of the removal of all natural 

 science from the quicksands of empiricism and specu- 

 lation, and the placing of it upon the solid basis of actual 

 experiment, the evidence of the senses and philosophical 

 thought. 



Although Gilbert constantly revolts against the physical 

 theories of the Peripatetics, it is none the less clear that 

 his mind was deeply tinctured with the logic and meta- 

 physics of Aristotle. But he stood at the dividing line 

 between the old philosophy and the new. To the rules of 

 the Stagirite he could conform his speculations ; but he 

 drew his conclusions under the rules imposed by Nature. 

 The control of Aristotle over mental processes did not 

 imply with him a corresponding control over the inter- 

 pretation of physical facts ; and this being so, he definitely 

 established, for the first time in the world's history, the 

 truth that metaphysical arguments alone are incompetent 

 to explain Nature's workings or to detect her immutable 

 laws. 



This appreciated makes fairly clear the method of 

 investigation which he endeavored to follow, and sheds 

 light on many of his statements otherwise obscure or self- 

 contradictory. His treatise contains much of what Aris- 

 totle calls exoteric discourse a process of noticing and 

 tracing out all the doubts and difficulties which beset the 

 enquiry in hand, along with the different opinions enter- 

 tained about it, either by the vulgar or by individual 

 philosophers, and the various reasons why such opinions 

 may be sustained or impugned. 1 After doing this, still 

 following the procedure of the Stagirite, he begins to lay 

 down and follow out affirmative principles of his own, 

 thus passing from the dialectic to the didactic stage. But 



Aristotle: Topica, i. (Grote, Aristotle, i., 68). 



