CHAPTER I 



FOUNDATION AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE 

 ROYAL SOCIETY 



THE foundation of the Royal Society was one of the earliest 

 practical fruits of the philosophical labours of Francis Bacon. 

 The experimental method of research which that great man so 

 strenuously expounded in his writings was a vehement protest 

 against the deductive method which till then had been in vogue. 

 His great aim was to enforce the patient investigation of Nature 

 by observation and experiment. He desired that a body of 

 accurately ascertained facts should be amassed, from which 

 alone, in his opinion, the processes of Nature could be understood, 

 and a solid foundation could be laid on which discovery and 

 invention might proceed apace. By such means, he believed, 

 man could attain to ' the knowledge of causes and secret motions 

 of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to 

 the effecting of all things possible.' * He held that ' there is much 

 ground for hoping that there are still laid up in the womb of 

 Nature many secrets of excellent use, having no affinity or 

 parallelism with anything that is now known, but lying entirely 

 out of the beat of the imagination, which have not yet been found 

 out. They too, no doubt, will some time or other, in the course 

 and revolution of many ages, come to light of themselves, just as 

 the others did ; only by the method of which we are now treating 

 they can be speedily and suddenly and simultaneously presented 

 and anticipated.' 2 So convinced was Bacon of the transcendent 

 importance of his experimental method that he seems to have 

 been unable to bring himself to admit that the inventions and 

 discoveries made before his time could have been due to science. 

 He regarded them rather as the happy accidents of chance. 3 



1 c New Atlantis.' 2 Nov. Org. I. cix. 



3 Nov. Org. I. viii, Ixxxv ; II. xxxi. He strangely ignored Gilbert's great work on 

 Magnetism, which was published in 1600 before the earliest of Bacon's philosophical treatises 



B 



