30 DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. 



with that of the hierarchy, under the intellectual courage 

 and activity which this great revolution had inspired. 

 Power, once awakened, cannot rest in one object. All 

 the sciences partook of the new influences. The world of 

 experimental philosophy was soon mapped out for posterity 

 by the comprehensive and enterprising genius of Bacon, 

 and the laws explained by which experiment could be 

 dignified into experience. 1 But no sooner was the im- 

 pulse given, than the same propensity was made manifest 

 of looking at all things in the one point of view which 

 chanced to be of predominant attraction. Our Gilbert, 

 a man of genuine philosophical genius, had no sooner 

 multiplied the facts of magnetism, and extended our 

 knowledge concerning the property of magnetic bodies, 

 but all things in heaven, and earth, and in the waters 

 beneath the earth, were resolved into magnetic influences. 

 Shortly after a new light was struck by Harriott 

 and Descartes, with their contemporaries, or immediate 

 predecessors, and the restoration of ancient geometry, 

 aided by the modern invention of algebra, placed the 

 science of mechanism on the philosophic throne. How 

 widely this domination spread, and how long it continued, 

 if, indeed, even now it can be said to have abdicated its 

 pretensions, the reader need not be reminded. The sub- 

 lime discoveries of Newton, and, together with these, his 

 not less fruitful than wonderful application, of the higher 

 mathesis to the movements of the celestial bodies, and to 

 the laws of light, gave almost a religious sanction to the 



1 Experiment, as an organ of reason, not less distinguished from the blind 

 or dreaming industry of the alchemists, than it was successfully opposed to 

 the barren subtleties of the schoolmen. 



