40 ON SOME ASPECTS OF THE 



It seemed to the wits of the day that the prolonged 

 labour, necessitated by a detailed examination of the 

 structure of minute natural objects, was childish and 

 ridiculous ; it seemed to society at large that it was 

 ignoble and even contemptible ; it seemed to practical 

 men meaningless, much ado about nothing, labour of 

 no practical utility to any living soul, and, therefore, 

 worthless. 



The ridicule extended to the experiments which formed 

 such an important part of the New Philosophy ; they 

 were considered as laborious folly which could not 

 possibly lead to any practical conclusion. In Gulliver s 

 Voyage to Laputa, Swift has satirized the experimental 

 work of the Royal Society. Gulliver is, you may remem- 

 ber, introduced into the learned academy of Lagado. 

 There he finds the natural philosophers all busy with 

 projects and honoured by the title of projectors. One 

 had been for eight years engaged on a project for ex- 

 tracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, and placing them in 

 hermetically-sealed vials in order to let them out in raw 

 inclement summers. Other projects were calcining ice 

 into gunpowder, softening marble into pillows and pin- 

 cushions, petrifying the hoofs of a living horse to preserve 

 them from foundering, whilst a famous project was that 

 of a most ingenious architect for building houses by 

 beginning at the roof and working downwards to the 

 foundation. 



The extent of the ridicule, satire, and invective poured 

 upon scientific work is only faintly portrayed by the 

 above samples ; it will, however, be observed that out 

 of many features presented by these attacks, I have 



merely popularized excerpts ; they contain ludicrous mistakes. Dr. 

 Johnson said of him that ' if he can tell a horse from a cow, that is the 

 extent of his knowledge of zoology '. 



