8 PROGRESS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE". 



obvious, for its pursuit ? 1 If reason did not suggest it, 

 one might have expected accident to do so. Coming 

 down yet later, we find still only a vague understand- 

 ing of the term ; and scarcely half-a-dozen names 

 (Eoger Bacon foremost among them) break forth as 

 lights of discovery amidst the darkness of many cen- 

 turies. The researches of the alchymists were blind 

 and next to profitless. Lord Bacon first designated 

 the value of experiment, yet scarcely with a full ap- 

 preciation of all its methods of proof. Though in 

 England alone we have the names of Harvey, Boyle, 

 Gilbert, Hales, Hooke, and the greater name of New- 

 ton, belonging to the same century, yet was the pro- 

 gress of this principle still partial only, and hampered 

 by adhesion to many errors of early date. And the 

 same remark applies generally to the science of France, 

 Germany, and Italy at this period ; great though some 

 of the men were who adventured on new fields and 

 methods of enquiry. 



Chemistry, in its successive stages, is the science 

 which has done most to develope experiment as the 

 great instrument of progress. Electricity, indeed, and 

 optics (the latter in the mighty hands of Newton), 

 furnish early examples of its employment. But 

 chemistry, in dealing with the relations and inter- 

 changes of matter in its most subtle shapes of atoms 

 and molecules, comes by compulsion to experiment as 

 the sole means of fulfilling its objects. Analysis and 



1 The exceptional instances of the researches of Archimedes the 



experiments of some of the Pythagorean school on the vibrations of bodies, 

 and a few others, do but render the general fact more striking. 



