CHILDHOOD OF SCIENCE. 195 



thoughtful eye the fall of apples from the tree. Objects fall in 

 the same manner from the highest elevations on earth, and 

 meteors fall from unknown heights in the sky. Why then may 

 not this gravity be a tendency which reaches beyond the earth, 

 even to the moon ? A stone attached to a string and whirled in 

 the air, is kept from flying off by the tension of the string. 

 Why may not gravity be the chain that holds the moon in its 

 sweep of thousands of miles? Light which emanates from a 

 central point was known to decrease in intensity in the inverse 

 proportion of the square of the distance. Analogy would teach 

 that gravity if it reached out into space would be in accordance 

 with the same law. If now he could know accurately the moon's 

 distance and how much it weighed, he could easily figure out the 

 force which was necessary to hold it in its orbit ; and if it was 

 the same that the known mass of the earth would exert at that 

 distance, then his hypothesis would be a proved fact. It was some 

 years before accurate estimates were made on the elements of his 

 problem. But ultimately his figures realized his most sanguine 

 expectations ; and thus was seated on the throne of science the 

 most potent ruler of the world of facts. 



It would be ungenerous to pass on to the child-workers in 

 science without paying our tribute to the illustrious father of 

 inductive philosophy. The Novum Organon of Francis Bacon,* 

 I do not hesitate to say, contains more original thought than any 

 other book that ever sprung from the genius of man. The world 

 of literature at the time when he wrote, less than three hundred 

 years ago, was a dreary waste ; yet this lonely traveler, unaided, 

 with scarce a finger-board to point his way, has given us the 

 guide-book of knowledge from that day to this. 



With a boldness that startled those rude ages he declared that 

 philosophy had been going wrong from the foundation of letters ; 

 that men had sought to make a world from their own conceptions, 

 and to draw from their own minds the materials which they em- 

 ployed. They had totally disregarded the facts of nature, and 

 without any intermediate steps had leaped at once to the most 

 sweeping and absurd generalizations. The way that promises 



* Born in 1561 Died, 1626. 



