SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD 



been bold enough to forecast the marvellous " improve- 

 ment of natural knowledge " which, under the influence of 

 the Society, has been won by methods of experiment and 

 induction. To some of the founders would have been 

 not less surprising the conditions under which this great 

 work has been accomplished. The master minds of that 

 age were more or less under the influence of the ideas repre- 

 sented by the monastery and the cell that is to say, an 

 Academy in which the Fellows live apart from common 

 life, and are secluded from its cares and interests. We find 

 these ideas in Bacon's Solomon's House, in his classical 

 fable of the New Atlantis ; even more strongly in the 

 generous plan for a scientific college submitted to Boyle 

 by the noble-hearted Evelyn, and in Cowley's proposition 

 for a college of experimental philosophy. Now the great 

 work of the Society has been done, not in the seclusion of 

 an Academy, but, so to speak, in the world. The Fellows 

 have not been supported in a learned leisure by the Society, 

 but taking their full part in the work of the world, of their 

 own substance maintained the Society. Under these 

 circumstances, there was no need to limit the number of 

 Fellows to the 27 fathers of Solomon's House, or to Cowley's 

 20 philosophers. The Society's 450 Fellows, all taking their 

 part in the common life of the nation, are a great power, 

 each Fellow acting upon the men around him, and so the 

 Society, like a leaven, imbuing the mind of the people with 

 the vivifying ferment of natural knowledge. And I think 



that upon the Fellows themselves, the living in constant 



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