OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 113 



1590, published a treatise on magnetism, full of 

 valuable facts and experiments, ingeniously rea- 

 soned on; and he likewise extended his enquiries 

 to a variety of other subjects, in particular to elec- 

 tricity. 



(104.) But, as the decisive mark of a great com- 

 mencing change in the direction of the human 

 faculties, astronomy, the only science in which the 

 ancients had made any real progress, and ascended 

 to any thing like large and general conceptions, 

 began once more to be studied in the best spirit 

 of a candid philosophy; and the Copernican or 

 Pythagorean system arose or revived, and rapidly 

 gained advocates. Galileo at length appeared, and 

 openly attacked and refuted the Aristotelian dog- 

 mas respecting motion, by direct appeal to the evi- 

 dence of sense, and by experiments of the most 

 convincing kind. The persecutions which such a 

 step drew upon him, the record of his perseverance 

 and sufferings, and the ultimate triumph of his 

 opinions and reasonings, have been too lately and 

 too well related* to require repetition here. 



(105.) By the discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, 

 and Galileo, the errors of the Aristotelian philo- 

 sophy were effectually overturned on a plain appeal 

 to the facts of nature ; but it remained to show on 

 broad and general principles, how and why Aristotle 

 was in the wrong ; to set in evidence the peculiar 

 weakness of his method of philosophizing, and to 

 substitute in its place a stronger and better. This 



* See the Life of Galileo Galilei, by Mr. Drinkwater, with 

 Illustrations of the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy. 



