30 Selections from Huxley 



in with the unholy cursing and the crackling wit of 

 the Rochesters and Sedleys, and with the revilings of the 

 political fanatics, if my imaginary plain dealer had gone 

 on to say that, if the return of such misfortunes were ever 



5 rendered impossible, it would not be in virtue of the vic- 

 tory of the faith of Laud, or of that of Milton; and, as 

 little, by the triumph of republicanism, as by that of 

 monarchy. But that the one thing needful for com- 

 passing this end was, that the people of England should 



10 second the efforts of an insignificant corporation, the es- 

 tablishment of which, a few years before the epoch of the 

 great plague and the great fire, had been as little noticed, 

 as they were conspicuous. 



Some twenty years before the outbreak of the plague 



15 a few calm and thoughtful students banded themselves to- 

 gether for the purpose, as they phrased it, of " improving 

 natural knowledge." The ends they proposed to attain 

 cannot be stated more clearly than in the words of one 

 of the founders of the organization: 



20 " Our business was (precluding matters of theology and 

 state affairs) to discourse and consider of philosophical 

 inquiries, and such as related thereunto: as Physick, 

 Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, 

 Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Ex- 



25 periments ; with the state of these studies and their cultiva- 

 tion at home and abroad. We then discoursed of the 

 circulation of the blood, the valves in the veins, the vense 

 lacteae, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, 

 the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of Jupi- 



30 ter, the oval shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, the 

 spots on the sun and its turning on its own axis, the in- 

 equalities and selenography of the moon, the several phases 

 of Venus and Mercury, the improvement of telescopes 



