make real progress in discovery, and even these could 

 do little in leavening the minds of their fellowmen with 

 the new ideas. 



Up to the middle of the seventeenth century an 

 agent which all experience since that time shows to be 

 necessary to the most productive intellectual activity 

 was wanting. This was the attraction of like minds, 

 making suggestions to each other, criticising, compar- 

 ing and reasoning. This element was introduced by 

 the organization of the Royal Society of London and 

 the Academy of Sciences of Paris. 



The members of these two bodies seem like ingenious 

 youth suddenly thrown into a new world of interesting 

 objects, the purposes and relations of which they had to 

 discover. The novelty of the situation is strikingly 

 shown in the questions which occupied the minds of 

 the incipient investigators. One natural result of 

 British maritime enterprise was that the aspirations of 

 the Fellows of the Royal Society were not confined to 

 any continent or hemisphere. Inquiries were sent all 

 the way to Batavia to know " whether there be a hill in 

 vSumatra which burneth continually, and a fountain 

 which runneth pure balsam. n The astronomical pre- 

 cision with which it seemed possible that physiological 

 operations might go on was evinced by the inquiry 

 whether the Indians can so prepare that stupefying 

 herb Datura that "they make it lie several days, 

 months, years, according as they will, in a man's body 

 without doing him any harm, and at the end kill him 

 without missing an hour's time." Of this continent 

 one of the inquiries was whether there be a tree in 



