TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 861 



gradually there grew up in the minds of men those modern truths to which I have 

 alluded in the opening passages of my remarks. 



To attempt to do justice to this theme in the few minutes at my disposal would 

 be indeed a vain endeavour ; but for the purpose of showing the lines along which 

 they ran, and to enable you to carry away with you the sequence of events to 

 which I am about to allude, I liave prepared a chronological chart. 



This chart extends from the time of Edward VI., in 1550, to the present year. 

 Horizontally it is divided, as you will notice, into years, and to the same scale 

 vertically into years also. 



Immediately below are marked off the reigns of the various English sovereigns, 

 under which are recorded, against their proper dates, some of the principal 

 political events of the period. At the top of the chart will also be found, against 

 their appropriate dates, a record of some of the principal social events, voyages, dis- 

 coveries, inventions, and other data which indicate the progress of science and the 

 arts, as well as of those social events which mark the increase of civilisation and 

 the growth of kindlier feelings in the human race. A few statistics are also given 

 of population, the output of coal and iron, and the progress of railway develop- 

 ment, to show how rapid has been the advance during the present century. 



In the body of the chart are marked off by diagonal lines, commencing at their 

 births and terminating at their deaths, the names of the great thinkers and workers, 

 scientific and otherwise, who have done so much for the advancement of the human 

 mind ; and coming later in the field, and marked in red, are noted those engineers 

 whose work alone became possible as the study of nature broadened out and bore 

 fruit. Consequently, by running the eye vertically upwards at any particular 

 period, it will at once be seen who were the great contemporaries of that period, 

 to what predecessors they were indebted, and what was the state of science during 

 their lifetime, and among what political events they carried on their work. 



A very brief inspection of this chart will show that to no one man or country 

 can be ascribed the sole merit of advancement. 



Advancement depends on the knowledge we have inherited from our ancestors, 

 and the opinions of our contemporaries acting on and reacting upon each other, and 

 together forming what we may call the drift of opinion of any age or period which 

 we may examine. 



At the stage at which we have now arrived it is as well to conceive what must 

 have been the feelings of men, especially of Englishmen, in the middle part of the 

 sixteenth century. By the Reformation their minds had been opened to the 

 exercise of private judgment, and there was presented before them a circumstance 

 never before experienced, nor which can ever again appeal to the human mind. 



By the discovery of the new world the earth space had been practically 

 doubled. These two great factors, freedom of thought and the enlargement of the 

 world, aided by printed books, produced fresh fruit in literature and science, and 

 an enthusiasm, almost amounting to the romantic, which carried men on to enter- 

 prises of the most daring kind, and filled them with the confidence that a great 

 and brilliant future was in store for the human race. 



The poetry and literature of the Elizabethan period teem with these senti- 

 ments, and these feelings sank deep into the minds of thinking men when they 

 contemplated more serious subjects. 



Peter Ramus (1515-1572) attacked the Aristotelian philosophy. 



Copernicus (1473-1543) revived the idea of Pythagoras and Aristarchus, that 

 Ihe sun, and not the earth, was the centre around which it revolved in company 

 with the other planets. He, however, still retained the notion that they revolved 

 in circles, and had, of course, to resort to epicycles, deferents, and the like, to 

 account for their apparent irregular motions. 



At a little later period, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was carrying on a series of 

 astronomical observations of an accuracy never before attempted; and although he 

 did not accept the Copernican theory, yet he so far began to lose faith in that of 

 Ptolemy as to propound a theory of his own to reconcile his more accurate 

 observations. 



About the same time, William Gilbert (1540-1603) published his work on the 



