THE EVOLUTION IDEA 121 



grasp of the principles of experimental science than 

 13acon showed, fortified by a far wider range of 

 actual experiment and observation. Not in his actual 

 conclusions, though many of these point with sur- 

 prising accuracy in the direction of truths estab- 

 lished by later generations, but in the soundness, the 

 wisdom, the tenacity of his methods lies his great 

 title to glory. Had the Catholic reaction not fatally 

 discouraged the pursuit of the natural sciences in 

 Italy, had Leonardo even left behind him any one 

 with zeal and knowledge enough to extract from the 

 mass of his MSS. some portion of his labours in those 

 sciences and give them to the world, an incalculable 

 impulse would have been given to all those enquiries 

 by which mankind has since been striving to under- 

 stand the laws of its being and control the conditions 

 of its environment, — to mathematics and astronomy, 

 to mechanics, hydraulics, and physics generally, to 

 geology, geography, and cosmology, to anatomy and 

 the sciences of life. 



Bruno {154<S-1Q00), Suarez (1548-1617) 



But not for almost another hundred years was 

 this scientific impulse to burst its bounds, when 

 the nascent spirit of inquiry claimed its first mar- 

 tyr in the person of the great Italian philoso- 

 pher of the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno. It 

 is a striking coincidence that the same year 

 (1548) witnessed the birth of the most extreme 

 rationalist and the most extreme conservative 

 among the theologians in science: Suarez the 



