312 JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
in a few instances, as in that of Galileo, instinctive and irresistible 
curiosity, combined with independent love of truth, shook off the 
intolerable yoke, and ventured to gaze on the movements of Nature 
with fearless unveiled eye, it was only with reference to a few 
departments of her domain, and apart from the formulation of a 
general principle applicable to all and every enquiry. But when, 
within the most sacred of all circles, Martin Luther ventured to set 
aside human authority hitherto deemed august, and claimed as a 
principle of universal conduct the right and duty of every man to 
think for himself, and search out even the truth requisite for his 
spiritual safety, there was then and there enunciated by a religious 
man, in the name and for the interests of religion, a principle which 
in its wide sweep covers the whole area of human knowledge and 
interests. The enfranchisement of the human mind, with full 
liberty of research, was a religious act. The subsequent and almost 
immediate rise of scientific independence naturally suggests the 
probability of one springing out of the other. Those who study 
closely the history of that period, and especially those who note 
carefully the first paragraph in Schiller's Geschichte des Dreissigjah- 
rigen Kriegs, will readily understand how it came to pass that this 
enfranchisement of the human mind, in the name and for the in- 
terests of religion, influenced the more thoughtful minds in both the 
political and scientific worlds to secure a similar freedom for them- 
selves. Lord Bacon was but giving utterance to the new-born spirit 
of freedom from authority when, in explaining the new method for 
unravelling the secrets of Nature — that other great Book as he was 
wont to regard it — he insisted, as a preliminary, that the searcher 
after truth should once and for ever, to use his own quaint terms, 
abolish those idola tribus, idola specus, idola fori, idola theatri 1 — 
those false deities which had hitherto, in the course of scientific 
investigation, swayed a pernicious influence over the mind, and 
prevented the acquisition of truth. This utter disregard of authori- 
ties, this renunciation of all and everything that presumed to set 
human opinions for men on their approach to interpret Nature, and 
so give a false colouring to the facts to be considered ; this ruthless 
clearance of all obstacles that the eye might come into direct con- 
tact with what Nature is in herself, and by patient gaze read at 
last her wondrous history in her own face, and if possible solve the 
perplexing riddles of her appearance — this, I say, was the negative 
1 Novum Organum Aphorismi, xxxix.-lxvi. 
