2/o PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



striking, since it includes the one just described and all 

 those which we shall define, and that was the general 

 contempt of authorities allied to SPIRIT OF FREE INQUIRY. 

 Men of learning refused to take anything for granted, and 

 began to examine everything for themselves hence the 

 new roads struck out in all directions : in the spheres of 

 religion, politics, philosophy, literature, art, and science. 

 We find this to be the common feature of men broadly 

 separated by their training or way of life : Copernicus ex- 

 hibits it just as much as Paracelsus, Galileo just as much 

 as Bruno. " Let nature replace Aristotle," was the motto. 

 Spirit of emancipation was the spring of all that was done 

 in that age. 3. A third characteristic of that revolutionary 

 time, an effect of the preceding one, was the craving for 

 PRACTICAL, as strongly distinguished from theoretical, WORK. 

 Among men keeping abreast of their time a qualification 

 which of course excludes the schoolmen from the move- 

 ment experiment and verification became the test of all 

 things. This spirit had been growing for generations, 

 fostered as it had been by the alchemists ever since Roger 

 Bacon, and it became ingrained in the habits of the XVIth 

 century inquirers. This hunger for practical results ex- 

 plains the great number of inventions, of instruments, of 

 discoveries which make the age so dissimilar from the 

 past. 4. A fact typical of the century, due again to in- 

 dependence of spirit, and one to which we desire to give 

 particular weight, was the promulgation of the TRUE METHOD 

 OF RESEARCH INDUCTION by some of the great men of 

 the age a fact proving that practical spirit or experimental 

 pursuit was no haphazard, happy-go-lucky, or empirical 

 bent ; but a consistent line of conduct, a well-conceived 

 and maturely-considered course, a well-thought-out resolve, 

 a well-laid scheme of procedure. Leonardo, embodying the 

 moods of the times, may be said to have given a code of 

 research to all inquirers by his forcible injunction to 

 observe phenomena, to resort to nature for information, to 

 question her by experiments, to verify experimental results, 

 and then, only then, to venture to formulate a law. This 

 was so completely the plan of action that we see it followed 



