THE REVIVAL OF SCIENCE 117 



may resist them; sapiens dominahitur astris: 

 they rule but God rules them."* This was said 

 by Robert Burton, and it probably represents 

 the average opinion of the more educated in 

 our period. 



The part played by alchemy in the life of 

 the times can be judged by Ben Jonson's 

 Alchemist, first acted in 1610, which affords 

 a true insight into the fashionable craze of the 

 time. The play was constantly presented 

 from that date until the closing of the theatres 

 and, on the restoration, was one of the first 

 plays to be revived. Jonson certainly had 

 mastered the jargon of this form of quackery, 

 and showed a profound knowledge of the art 

 of its professors. In Epicoene, or the Silent 

 Woman, he refers to the love pliiltres of one 

 Forman, a most flagrant rascal who was mixed 

 up with the Overbury trial. 



It has been said that a competent man of 

 science should be able to put into language 

 ''understanded of the people" any problem, no 

 matter how complex, at which he is working. 

 This seems hardly possible in the twentieth 



* Anatomy of Melancholy, part Ij sec. II, Mem. 1, sec. IV. 



