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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 372 



Erasmus; but there is little doubt that, upon his first visit, he 

 found there attainments quite equal to his own. The encomi- 

 um of Erasmus upon his English friends has been often quoted : 

 "When I listen to my friend Colet, I fancy I am listening to 

 Plato himself. Who but must admire Grocyn, who is nothing 

 short of a complete encyclopaedia of knowledge? Did ever any 

 one possess such taste, so acute, polished, and searching, as 

 Linacre? Has nature ever produced a mind gentler, sweeter, 

 or more richly gifted than that of Thomas More?" The banter- 

 ing compliment which Erasmus paid More illustrates the delight- 

 ful intellectual sympathy which united this remarkable body of 

 men to one another. He entitled his famous work, composed 

 at More's house, the "Praise of Folly;" the Latin words con- 

 taining a play upon his host's name. Encomium Morice. The 

 thoroughness with which the new culture took possession of 

 the centres of English education is indicated in the literature 

 produced in the succeeding generation. The Elizabethan drama- 

 tists were nearly all, except Shakspeare, university bred : they 

 often use their classical knowledge with indifferent judgment 

 and taste, but they make it a prominent element in their work. 

 Shakspeare' s classical allusions need not be explained by deny- 

 ing his identity: intercourse with his university trained com- 

 peers sufficiently accounts for them. Much of the interest of 

 this early group of scholars was centred in the elucidation of 

 the Scriptures. Colet lectured at Oxford on the Epistles of St. 

 Paul: Erasmus worked at Cambridge on his edition of the 

 Greek text of the New Testament. The practical aims and the 

 moral earnestness of the English revival of letters distinguished 

 it from that of Italy, from which it took its origin, and ren- 

 dered it influential upon the higher life of the nation. 



The leaders of German humanism were, if possible, more in- 

 teresting in personal traits than their English co-laborers. Agric- 

 ola, Eeuchlin, Ulrich von Hutten, Melancthon, — these names 

 suggest a variety of character and achievement peculiarly 

 attractive. The development, however, of the movement in 

 Germany was cut short by the advent of the Reformation. 

 Thi-s had been foreseen by Erasmus, who had from the first 

 looked with little sympathy upon Luther. A typical man of 

 letters, his chief concern was for literature, the interests of 

 which he would not jeopardize by theological disputes. But 

 the extent to which the classical revival had leavened the 

 thought of the universities may be seen in the fact that the 

 Reformation derived from them its chief impulse. This great 

 movement of faith and conduct was pre-eminently academical 

 in its character. It was not in origin a popular revolution, but 

 a learned one: the study of Greek, pursued for the sake of 

 scriptural interpretation rather than of merely elegant accom- 

 plishment, was its inspiration. Whatever view one may take 

 of the German Reformation, it must be conceded that institu- 

 tions of learning have rarely acted upon society with greater 

 effect than did universities like that of Wittenburg. which 

 first encouraged humane studies, and then used them as in- 

 struments of social change. 



In 1613, Descartes completed his studies at the Jesuit School of 

 La rieche. The account which he gives us of his education shows 

 how largely the classical learning had then been accepted by 

 the historical successors of its old scholastic adversaries. If we 

 take the fall of Constantinople as an approximate date for the 

 beginning of the movement, and consider that the Jesuit ideas 

 of education were fairly in operation by the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century, a period of about one hundred and fifty 

 years would seem to have been occupied in winning recognition 

 for the new learning. The magnitude of the interests involved 

 in this momentous intellectual change may explain its slow 

 accompl ishmen t . 



The term ordinarily applied to the intellectual awakening of 

 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries accurately describes its 

 character. It was a renaissance, a revival of the past. It is 

 evident, that, unaccompanied by any other influence, this re- 

 invigoration of the sentiments and ideas of antiquity was an 

 inadequate impulse and basis of civilization. No age can afford 

 to content itself with what has already been. It is difficult 

 to overestimate the importance, as an element in the formation 



of modern society, of the new studies, which, after the force of 

 the renaissance was in a measure expended, attracted the best 

 thought of the time. "The fifteenth century," it has been 

 said, "restored the broken links of time; the seventeenth 

 unveiled space. The former had shown to man his place in 

 history; the latter was to assign him his place in nature." 



The great age of physical discovery, beginnnig about the 

 middle of the sixteenth century, but falling mainly in the 

 seventeenth, was distinguished above all preceding eras by in- 

 dependence of the past. No generation of thinkers has ever 

 appeared which derived so little from its predecessors as that 

 which, acting concurrently in each of the leading countries of 

 Europe, laid the foundations of modern science. It is signifi- 

 cant that so many of the great men of that epoch interested 

 themselves about the question of method. Bacon wrote a new 

 Organum, discussing the laws under which the object is to be 

 known, as the Organum of Aristotle had discussed the laws 

 under which the subject thinks. The first important work of 

 Descartes was the "Discourse on Method," reversing the pro- 

 cedure of'Bacon, and seeking the knowledge of effects through 

 their causes. Pascal's fragment on method is well known. 

 Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hobbes, Locke, — their common character- 

 istic is that they begin with first principles, and manifest an 

 almost unprecedented degree of intellectual independence. It 

 would hardly be expected that an era so self-reliant and so 

 original would have much concern with the traditions and in- 

 stitutions of previous learning. Yet the investigation of nature 

 which created physical science in the seventeenth century 

 founded itself at first upon what had been done in the past. 

 Copernicus evolved his system after an exhaustive study of the 

 various astronomical systems of the ancients. All the dis- 

 coverers who co-operated in giving this new direction to men's 

 thoughts were trained in schools of education ; most of them filled 

 professor's chairs. It is an interesting fact that so many who 

 have contributed to scientific thought have been teachers. This 

 was noticeably the case at the originative epoch of the seven- 

 teenth century : Galileo was a professor at Pisa and Padua, 

 Kepler at Prague, Torricelli at the Florentine Academy, New- 

 ton at Cambridge. The founders of modern science were in- 

 debted to the universities of their day for the equipment of 

 knowledge, without which, novel as were their methods and 

 results, they could not have done their work. Nor, since their 

 time, have contributions to knowledge in this department been 

 often made by men who have not enjoyed the advantage of 

 regular education. A man of letters may dispense with this : 

 it is not necessary that he be widely familiar with the produc- 

 tions of the past. A man of science must know what has been 

 accomplished by his predecessors : the subjects with which he 

 deals have a rigorous continuity of development. Eminent in- 

 ventors have often been imperfectly educated ; but the originat- 

 ing thought, which makes invention possible, comes from a 

 well -furnished mind. Of course, this is more and more the 

 case as experimental methods are developed. The perfecting 

 and multiplication of mechanical aids to investigation, the 

 founding of laboratories and museums and libraries, tend to 

 concentrate activity at points where these facilities are fur- 

 nished, and thus make the service of learned institutions in- 

 creasingly indispensable. As the philosophical and theological 

 element in modern thought goes back to the universities of the 

 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which were produced by it: 

 and as the humanistic and classical tradition finds its origin 

 largely in the learned schools of the renaissance, — so the scien- 

 tific factor is, even more distinctly, academic in its history. 

 Since the study of nature requires acquisitions and facilities 

 which cannot be commanded by the isolated individual, and 

 must always demand associated and organized endeavor, we see 

 how enormous is the indebtedness of the industrial and com- 

 mercial civilization of the modern world to institutions which 

 it sometimes thoughtlessly considers unpractical. 



In consideration of the sacrifices and sufferings of the citizens 

 of Leyden during that memorable siege whose heroic and pic- 

 turesque incidents have been made familiar to us by Motley, 

 they were offered by the states of the Netherlands their choice 



