408 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



Hence it came about because Iris had lent Minerva 

 her wings because Folly had put her shoulder to the 

 load which Reason could not move that a great progress 

 in philosophical thought was made. The Aristotelian 

 physics and the moribund relics of scholasticism expired; 

 the newer vagaries of the Rosicrucians faded into thinner 

 air than even their most refined spirits could breathe. 

 The "sure arguments and demonstrated experiments" 

 for which Gilbert had so strongly pleaded were hereafter 

 to be the oi;ly foundation for physical knowledge. And 

 all this, because the touch of that singularly wise, pure 

 and good Charles had made experimental science the 

 mode. 



But however much people betook themselves to the new 

 philosophy because it was fashionable, this was far from 

 being the reason which influenced the king himself. His 

 taste for science was no craving for new diversion, nor did 

 he soon tire of his fancy. His inclination to physical study 

 and experiment was natural. He would have been a good 

 chemist or physicist had he not been king. Sprat, writ- 

 ing five years after the establishment of the Society, tells 

 us that he constantly spurred the members onward to fresh 

 exertion and "provok'd them to unwearied activity in 

 their Experiments by the most effectual means of his 

 Royal example:" that "the noise of Mechanick Instru- 

 ments is heard in Whitehall itself, and the King has 

 under his own roof found place for Chymical Operators." 

 It is the king who u has endowed the College of London 

 with new Priviledges . . planted a Physick Garden under 

 his own eye" and "made Plantations enough, even almost 

 to repair the mines of a Civil War" the king who offered 

 rewards to "those that shall discover the Meridian," the 

 king who, "acknowledged to be the best Judge amongst 

 Seamen and Shipwrights," set the Society studying the 

 problems of navigation and ship-building. That he was 

 especially interested in magnetism is shown by his pre- 

 sentation of a terrella to the Society a stone which the 



