ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 19 



be crowned, by burdening them no further with royal 

 patronage or state interference. 



Thus it was that the half-dozen young men, studi- 

 ous of the " New Philosophy," who met in one another's 

 lodgings in Oxford or in London, in the middle of the 

 seventeenth century, grew in numerical and in real 

 strength, until, in its latter part, the "Royal Society for 

 the Improvement of Natural Knowledge" had already 

 become famous, and had acquired a claim upon the 

 veneration of Englishmen, which it has ever since re- 

 tained, as the principal focus of scientific activity in 

 our islands, and the chief champion of the cause it was 

 formed to support. 



It was by the aid of the Royal Society that Newton 

 published his Principia. If all the books in the world , 

 except the Philosophical Transactions, were destroyed, 

 it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science 

 would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual 

 progress of the last two centuries would be largely, 

 though incompletely, recorded. Nor have any signs 

 of halting or of decrepitude manifested themselves 

 in our own times. As in Dr. Wallis's days, so in these, 

 "our business is, precluding theology and state af- 

 fairs, to discourse and consider of philosophical en- 

 quiries." But our " Mathematick " is one which 

 Newton would have to go to school to learn ; our " Sta- 

 ticks, Mechanicks, Magneticks, Chymicks, and Nat- 

 ural Experiments" constitute a mass of physical and 

 chemical knowledge, a glimpse at which would com- 

 pensate Galileo for the doings of a score of inquisi- 

 torial cardinals; our "Physick" and "Anatomy" 

 have embraced such infinite varieties of beings, have 

 laid open such new worlds in time and space, have 

 grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex prob- 



