PART III 



THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE 

 ABOUT A.D. 1600 ONWARDS 



1 Though science, like Nature, may be driven out' with a fork, ecclesi- 

 astical or other, yet she surely comes bck again.' HUXLEY. 

 Prologue to Collected Essays, vol. v. 



THE exercise of a more tolerant spirit, to which 

 reference has been made, had its limits. It is true 

 that Dr. South, a famous divine, denounced the 

 Royal Society (founded 1645) as an irreligious 

 body ; although a Dr. Wallis, one of the first mem- 

 bers, especially declared that 'matters of theology' 

 were ' precluded ' : the business being ' to discourse 

 and consider of philosophical enquiries and such 

 as related thereunto ; as Physick, Anatomy, Geo- 

 metry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, 

 Chymicks, and Natural Experiments ; with the state 

 of these studies, and their cultivation at home and 

 abroad.' Regardless of South and such as agreed 

 with him, Torricelli worked at hydrodynamics, and 

 discovered the principle of the barometer ; Boyle 

 inquired into the law of the compressibility of gases ; 



