their relation to the Progress of Science. 177 
definite establishment marks the opening of a great age of 
scientific discovery in England. Almost every year of the 
half-century which followed saw some step made to a wider 
and truer knowledge.” Flamsteed, Halley, Sydenham, Wood¬ 
ward, Grew, and, above all, Newton, are names which adorn 
the history of Science at this period. In Astronomy, in 
Medicine, and in Physiology as well as in Descriptive Botany 
and Zoology, mere empirical enumeration was rapidly giving 
place to the conception of Law. In the words of a recent and 
eloquent writer, “ Natural Law is the last and most magnifi¬ 
cent discovery of science.In the earlier centuries, 
before the birth of science, Phenomena were studied alone. 
The world then was a chaos, a collection of single, isolated, 
and independent facts. Deeper thinkers saw, indeed, that 
relations must subsist between the facts, but the Reign of 
Law was never more .... than a far-off vision. Their 
philosophies heroically sought to marshal the discrete ma¬ 
terials of the universe into thinkable form, but .... with 
Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler the first regular lines of the 
universe began to be discerned. When Nature yielded to 
Newton her great secret, Gravitation was felt to be not 
greater as a fact in itself than as a revelation that Law 
was fact. And therefore the search for individual Phenomena 
gave way before the larger study of their relations. The 
pursuit of Law became the passion of science. What that 
discovery of Law has done for Nature, it is impossible to 
estimate. As a mere spectacle the universe to-day discloses 
a beauty so transcendent that he who disciplines himself by 
scientific work finds it an overwhelming reward simply to 
behold it. - In these Laws one stands face to face with truth, 
solid and unchangeable. Each single law is an instrument 
of scientific research, simple in its adjustments, universal in 
its applications, infallible in its results.” 
Dryden the poet-laureate, who became a Fellow of the 
Royal Society in November, 1662, could only faintly have 
appreciated this when he wrote his apostrophe to the 
Society,— 
