Notice of British Naturalists. 223 



'•' As things are at present conducted," says he, " a sudden transi- 

 tion is made from sensible objects and particular facts, (O general 

 propositions, which are accounted principles ; and around which, 

 as around so many fixed poles, disputation and argument contin- 

 ually revolve. From the propositions thus hastily assumed, all 

 things are derived, by a process compendious and precipitate, ill 

 suited to discovery, but wonderfully accommodated to debate. 

 The way that promises success is the reverse of this. It requires 

 that we should generalize slowly, going from particular things to 

 those which are but one step more general, from those to others 

 of still greater extent ; and so on to such as are universal. By 

 such means we may hope to arrive at principles, not vague and 

 obscure, but luminous and well defined, such as nature herself 

 will not refuse to acknowledge." The end of all knowledge is 

 utility, the improvement of the condition of mankind ; and vain 

 must that species of it ever be which revolves within itself, and 

 has in view no ultimate effects. 



It was not long before his works began to take effect among 

 thinking men. Truth advances slowly ; especially when long 

 established errors oppose its progress ; but still, there are always 

 in society a certain number of persons, who, standing on a higher 

 eminence, like the Hebrew sentinels of old, receive the first 

 gleams of light, and inform those below of the fact. Bacon 

 awakened a spirit of inquiry ; and the minds of men began to 

 be opened to the absurd fables of ancient authors, and to cast 

 aside the interminable synonyms which obscured, while they 

 were meant to elucidate natural history. 



The first whom we may rank in the new school of British nat- 

 uralists was John Ray, or Wray, for he wrote his name in both 

 ways. He was born in 1628, at Black Notley, near Braintree, in 

 Essex ; a small and picturesque country hamlet, but remarkable 

 for nothing else, we believe, except as being the birth place a few 

 years before of the celebrated Wilham Bedell, bishop of Kilmore, 

 in Ireland; a man equally remarkable for his piety and modera- 

 tion ; and respected and well treated by even his opponents and 

 enemies. 



Ray was the son of a blacksmith, who, from the little we can 

 learn of him, appears to have been in his station, a person of so- 

 ber habits and respectability, and to have amassed sufficient prop- 

 erty to give his son a good education. Of the early years of the 



