THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN FRANCE. 95 



was in danger of falling a prey to hasty generalisation 

 for the purpose of practical ends. Practical demands 

 threatened then, as they frequently still do, to stifle for 

 to force into premature growth the patient thought which 

 had just begun to germinate in the new light and freedom 

 of reason. The narrow view had indeed been widened, 

 and the breadth of the land had been surveyed, but there 

 was little inclination to deepen the view, or to do more 

 than search on the surface. The spirit of Bacon's philo- 

 sophy required a corrective. For a long time to come the 

 hope of practical application had to be postponed ; the 

 thinker and student had to retire into solitude, and there 

 to lay the more permanent foundations of the new re- 6. 

 search. This was done by Newton for all time. His byNe\\i;on. 

 reputation spread more slowly than that of the great 

 High Chancellor; but it rests on a surer foundation, 

 which baffles every attempt to shake it, and will outlast 

 all coming changes of thought. 



The beginnings of modern scientific thought are thus to 

 be found in this country. Lord Bacon foretold propheti- 

 cally the great change which the new philosophy was 

 destined to work. Newton more patiently drew up the 

 first simple rules and gave the first brilliant application. 

 More than the unfinished and wearisome pages of Bacon's 

 ' Novum Organum ' does the ' Principia ' deserve to be 

 placed on a line with Aristotle and Euclid as a model 

 work of scientific inquiry. 



For a real recognition of the greatness of Newton, as well 7. 



. . . , Bacon's and 



as for a partial realisation of Bacon s plans, we are, however, Newton's 



^ ideas taken 



mainly indebted to the French philosophers of the second '^p^^^j^ j^jj 

 half of the eighteenth century. Bacon's plan of promoting ^^^^'^^- 



