NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND 



handwriting which capitalist development was 

 slowly but surely tracing on the wall of social in- 

 stitutions. So much more briskly did economic 

 evolution proceed on its course, sowing the seeds 

 of future revolutions, which would in due time 

 clear the field for a more scientific and evolu- 

 tionary materialism. For instance, when cotton- 

 planting was introduced in Virginia, one year 

 after the publication of Bacon's " Novum Or- 

 ganon," the germs were scattered for the Civil 

 War, that was destined to shake the foundations 

 of the future North-American republic, 245 years 

 later, and to sound the tocsin for a proletarian 

 movement, which . would some day reap the ma- 

 ture fruits of materialist science. 



At the same time, inventors began to cast about 

 for means of increasing the productivity of labor, 

 and natural science gathered more empirical ma- 

 terial for its special departments. 



Early in the i/th century, De Caus, a French 

 engineer, had invented a machine by which a 

 column of water could be elevated by the pres- 

 sure of steam confined in a vessel above the water. 

 In 1629, Branca, an Italian inventor, contrived a 

 plan for working several mills by a blast of steam 

 against the vanes. In 1639, the transit of Venus 

 across the orb of the sun was for the first time 



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