400 ON THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE OF THE 



" take its accounts from things as they are in the sensible 

 " world. The illustrious Lord Bacon hath noted it as the 

 " chief cause of the unfruitfulness of the former methods of 

 " knowledge, that they were but the exercises of the mind 

 " making conclusions, and spinning out notions from its own 

 il native store ; from which way of proceeding nothing but dis- 

 " pute could be expected *. — He therefore proposed another 

 " method, which was, to reform and enlarge knowledge by ob- 

 " servation and experiment ; to examine and record particu- 

 " lars ; and to rise by degrees of induction to general proposi- 

 " tions ; and from them to take observation for new inquiries ; 

 " so that nature being known, may be mastered, and used in 

 "the service of human life. This was a mighty design, 

 " groundedly laid, and happily recommended by the glorious 

 " author ; but to the carrying it on, it was necessary there 

 " should be many heads and many hands, and those form- 

 " ed into an assembly that might inter-communicate their 

 " trials and observations. This the great man desired, and 

 " formed a Society of experimenters in a romantic model ; 

 " but he could do no more ; his time was not ripe for such per- 

 •'* formances. These things, therefore, were considered by the 

 " later Virtuosi, who several of them combined together, and 

 " set themselves to work upon his grand design -f ." 



Similar 



* Glanvill's Plus Ultra, p. 52. 



■f Ibid. p. 87, 98. — There are some who would fain persuade us, that the 

 taste for experimental philosophy was introduced into England from the Conti- 

 nent, and that the first idea of the Royal Society was copied from similar asso- 

 ciations abroad. This, certainly, was not the language of the founders and early 

 historians of that Society. It is curious to remark, that while some of our 

 own writers ascribe its origin, and the philosophical spirit which gave it birth, 

 to foreign excitements, there are, on the other hand, foreign writers who trace 

 the Academies of the Continent to the effects produced by the writings 



of 



