92 WALTER AUBREY KIDD, M.D., M.R.C.S., F.Z.S., ON 



astronomer, and the alchemist of the chemist, though frowned 

 upon, were not seriously persecuted. Wlien in the sixteenth 

 century Copernicus reversed the Ptolemaic system, and in the 

 seventeenth, Tycho, Bruno and Galileo completed his work, the 

 theories of orthodox Science and the orthodox religious teaching 

 on points of Science of that day came into serious conflict, and 

 persecution according to sixteenth-century methods necessarily 

 followed. Such a position as this could benefit neither Eeligion 

 nor Science, and still the relations of the two were slight as a 

 rule, or hostile from time to time. During the Dark Ages 

 before the Eenaissance one branch of Science, though it made 

 little progress from the days of Hippocrates and Galen, remained 

 like a small meeting-ground for Eeligion and Science ; for the 

 Church was ever ready to shelter medical science and to 

 promote the practice of the healing art. In this we have 

 a small glimpse of the better days to come, wlien Eeligion and 

 Science are beginning to look upon one another as partners in 

 the betterment of man in his whole being. 



The work of Francis Bacon in the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries may fairly be reckoned as important an epoch as that 

 of Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. He is one of the greatest 

 pioneers of modern Science, and at the same time a man of 

 profound insight into the truths of Eeligion, and in this respect 

 a representative of the most modern man of Science. He may 

 have underrated, indeed, the value of deductive science, and 

 rejected too hastily some of the greatest discoveries of his day, 

 such as those of Copernicus and the work of Gilbert on 

 magnetism. But " it was the energy, the profound conviction, 

 the eloquence of Bacon which first called the attention of 

 mankind as a whole to the power and importance of physical 

 research. It was he who, by his lofty faith in the results and 

 victories of the new philosophy, nerved its followers to a zeal 

 and confidence equal to his own. It was he who, above all, 

 gave dignity to the slow and patient processes of investigation, 

 of experiment, of comparison, to the sacrificing of hypothesis to 

 fact, to the single aim after truth, which was to be the law of 

 modern Science." A very significant and courageous exception 

 was made by him in that he refused to include theology in the 

 branches of knowledge contained in his system of Science, 

 though he was the servant of a King whom theological studies 

 especially delighted. He held that the premisses of the 

 Church's teaching, or of Eeligion, were certain and fixed, and 

 that his method of inductive inquiry was inapplicable to 

 theology. This it certainly was in his day, and in many of her 



