1884.] Half-Hours with the Old Naturalists. 
203 
change was impending. There had sprung up about this 
time a female fanatic, Antonia or Antoinette Bourignon. 
Had this woman lived in our “ advanced ” days she might 
have become an ethicist, a Bestiarian, and have written 
“Perfect Ways ” or “ Peaks of Darien.” In the seventeenth 
century, however, such resources for abnormal women did 
not exist, and the Bourignon accordingly became a sedt- 
founder and heresiarch. What were her especial tenets the 
readers of the “Journal of Science” will scarcely trouble 
themselves to inquire. Suffice it to say that her sedt was 
anathematised by the Kirk of Scotland, and that she, like 
not a few kindred spirits, whilst eager for power and influence, 
was in no way blind to her private interests. 
Some of her books fell, in an evil hour, into the hands of 
Swammerdam, who unfortunately read them and felt inte- 
rested in them — a circumstance perhaps due to his morbid 
condition. He felt a desire to know more of her teachings. 
A friend did him the ill-service to effedt an introduction. 
Bourignon, who was then living in Holstein, flattered, per- 
haps, at theprospedt of enlisting among her followers a man 
of high reputation, allowed him to write to her, and vouch- 
safed to answer his letters. She soon acquired a strange 
and unexplained ascendancy over him. He did not presume 
to publish anything without her formal permission. She 
taught him to regard scientific research as a “ worldly” and 
sinful waste of time which might better be devoted to mys- 
tical reverie. It is singular how in this respedt her teachings 
pradtically coincided with those of some of our modern 
ethicists, who, though certainly not overburdened with 
religious beliefs, tell us that research makes us neither 
better nor happier, and is therefore a waste of time ! The 
one and the other of these misleaders ignore the fadt that 
with certain minds the search after truth is a ruling prin- 
ciple, quite independent of any benefits, outward or inward, 
which may arise. With us the craving for knowledge is 
just as much its own justification as is the craving for 
goodness. 
We must again pronounce it strange that a man so inde- 
pendent, so fond of his own way as was Swammerdam, 
should allow himself to be dictated to by an ignorant fanatic. 
He who had rejedted, it is said, with scant courtesy, the 
liberal offers of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, does not rise 
in our estimation when he becomes the vassal of a Bou- 
rignon. 
Meantime he still engaged in researches on hernia, proving 
that it does not involve a rupture of the peritoneum. He 
