speculation for faith; and at all events it will account for the easy swearing of those who affirm on the Holy Evangelists that the Pope actually has no spiritual authority within these realms, although constantly complaining of its exercise.

We subjoin an able sketch of Newton's character, which we have abridged as little as possible.

"Such were the last days of Sir Isaac Newton, and such were the laurels that were shed over his grave. A century of discoveries has since his time been added to science; but brilliant as these discoveries are, they have not obliterated the minutest of his labours, and have served only to brighten the halo which encircles his name. His achievements of genius, like the source from which they spring, are indestructible. Acts of legislation and deeds of war may infer a high celebrity, but the reputation which they bring is local and transient; and while they are hailed by the nation which they benefit, they are reprobated by the people whom they ruin or enslave. The labours of science bear along with them, on the contrary, no counterpart of evil. They are the liberal bequests of great minds to every individual of their race, and wherever they are welcomed and honoured they become the solace of private life, and the ornament and bulwark of the commonwealth.

"The importance of Sir Isaac Newton's discoveries has been sufficiently exhibited in the preceding chapters. The peculiar character of his genius, and the method which he pursued in his inquiries, can be gathered only from the study of his works, and from the history of his individual labours. Were we to judge of the qualities of his mind from the early age at which he made his principal discoveries, and from the rapidity of their succession, we should be led to ascribe to him that quickness of penetration, and that exuberance of invention, which is more characteristic of practical than of philosophical genius. But we must recollect that Newton was placed in the most favourable circumstances for the development of his powers. The flower of his youth and the vigour of his manhood were entirely devoted to science. No injudicious guardian controlled his ruling passion, and no ungenial studies or professional toils interrupted the continuity of his pursuits. His discoveries were, therefore, the fruit of persevering and unbroken study, and he himself declared that whatever service he had done to the public was not owing to any extraordinary sagacity, but solely to industry and patient thought.

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Initiated early into the abstractions of geometry, he was deeply imbued with her ennobling spirit, and if his acquisitions were not made with the rapidity of intention, they were at least firmly secured, and the grasp which he took of it was proportional to the mental labour which it exhausted. Overlooking what was trivial

and separating what was extraneous, he bore down with intuitive sagacity on the prominencies of his subject, and having thus grappled with its difficulties, he never failed to entrench himself in its strongholds.

"To the highest powers of invention Newton added what so seldom accompanies them, the talent of simplifying and communicating his profoundest speculations. In the economy of her distributions nature is seldom thus lavish of her intellectual gifts. The inspired genius which creates is rarely conferred along with the matured judgment which combines, and yet, without the exertion of both, the fabric of human wisdom could never have been reared. Though a ray from heaven kindled the vestal fire, yet an humble priesthood was required to keep alive the flame.”

The comparison of Newton with Bacon is especially interesting.

"The method of investigating truth by observation and experiment so successfully pursued in the Principia, has been ascribed by some modern writers of celebrity to Lord Bacon; and Sir Isaac Newton is represented as having owed all his discoveries to the application of the principles of that distinguished writer. One of the greatest admirers of Lord Bacon has gone so far as to characterize him as a man who has had no rival in the times which are past, and as likely to have none in the times which are to come. In an eulogy so overstrained we feel that the language of a panegyric has passed into that of idolatry, and we are desirous of weighing the force of arguments which tend to depose Newton from the high priesthood of nature, and to unsettle the proud doctrines of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo.

"That Bacon was a man of profound genius, and endowed with varied and profound talent,--the most skilful logician,-the most profound and eloquent writer of the age which he adorned, are points which have been established by universal suffrage. The study of ancient systems had early impressed him with the conviction that experiment and observation were the only sure guides in physical inquiries: and ignorant though he was of the principles, the methods and the details of the mathematical sciences, his ambition prompted him to aim at the construction of an artificial system, by which the laws of nature might be investigated, and which might direct the inquiries of philosophers in every future age. necessity of experimental research, and of advancing gradually from the study of facts to the determination of their cause, though the groundwork of Bacon's method, is a doctrine which was not only inculcated by, but successfully followed by, preceding philosophers. In a letter from Tycho Brahe to Kepler, this industrious astronomer urges his pupil to lay a solid foundation for his views by actual observation, and then by ascending from these, to strive

The

to reach the causes of thirst;' and it was no doubt under the influence of this advice that Kepler submitted his wildest fancies to the test of observation, and was conducted to his most splendid discoveries. The reasonings of Copernicus, who preceded Bacon by more than a century, were all founded on the most legitimate induction. Dr. Gilbert has exhibited in his treatise on the magnet the most perfect specimen of physical research. Leonardo da Pinci had described in the clearest manner the proper method of philosophical investigation, and the whole scientific career of Galileo was one continued example of the most sagacious application of observation and experiment to the discovery of general laws. The names of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and Cardan, have been raised in opposition to this constellation of great names, and while it is admitted that even they had thrown off the yoke of the schools, and had succeeded in experimental research, their credulity and their pretensions have been adduced as a proof that, to the 'bulk of philosophers,' the method of induction was unknown. The fault of this argument lies in the conclusion being infinitely more general than the fact. The errors of these men were founded not on their ignorance, but on their presumption. They wanted the patience of philosophy and not her methods.

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"Having thus shown that the distinguished philosophers who flourished before Bacon were perfect masters, both of the principle and practice of inductive research, it becomes interesting to inquire whether or not the philosophers who succeeded him, acknowledged any obligation to his system, or derived the slightest advantage from his precepts. If Bacon constructed a method to which mo dern science owes its existence, we shall find its cultivators grateful for the gift, and offering the richest incense at the shrine of a benefactor, whose generous labours conducted them to immortality. No such testimonies, however, are to be found. Nearly two hundred years have gone by, teeming with the richest fruits of human genius, and no grateful disciple has appeared to vindicate the rights of the alleged legislator of science. Even Newton, who was born and educated after the publication of the Novum Organon, never mentions the name of Bacon or his system; and the amiable and indefatigable Boyle treats him with the same disrespectful silence. When we are told, therefore, that Newton owed all his discoveries to the method of Bacon, nothing more can be meant than that he proceeded in that path of observation and experiment, which has been so warmly recommended in the Novum Organon: but it ought to have been added that the same method was practised by his predecessors, that Newton possessed no secret that was not used by Galileo and Copernicus, and that he would have enriched science with the same splendid discoveries if the name and writings of Bacon had never been heard of."

Equally striking are the observations on the Inductive Process itself.

"From this view of the subject we shall now proceed to examine the Baconian process itself, and consider if it possesses any secret as an artificial method of discovery, or if it is at all capable of being employed for this purpose even in the humblest works of scientific enquiry,

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The process of Lord Bacon was, we believe, never tried by any philosopher but himself. As the subject of its application he selected that of heat. With his usual erudition he collected all the facts that science could supply,-he arranged them in tables,-he crossquestioned them with all the subtlety of a pleader,-he combined them with all the sagacity of a judge, and he conjured them by all the magic of his exclusive processes. But after all this display of physical logic, Nature thus interrogated was still silent. The oracle which he had himself established, refused to give its testimony, and the ministering priest was driven with discomfiture from his shrine. This example, in that of the application of his system, will remain to future ages as a memorable instance of the absurdity of attempting to filter discovery by any artificial rules.

"Nothing even in mathematical science can be more certain than that a collection of scientific facts are of themselves incapable of leading to discovery, or to the determination of general laws, unless they contain the predominating fact or relation in which the discovery mainly resides. A vertical column of arch-stones possesses more strength than the same materials arranged in an arch without the key-stone. However nicely they are adjusted, and however nobly the arch may spring, it never can possess either equilibrium or stability. In this comparison all the facts are supposed to be necessary to the final result, but in the inductive method it is impossible to ascertain the relative importance of any facts, or even to determine if the facts have any value at all, till the master part, which constitutes the discovery, has crowned the zealous efforts of the aspiring philosopher. The mind then returns to the dark and barren waste over which it has been hovering, and by the guidance of this single torch it embraces under the comprehensive grasp of general principles the multifarious and insulated phenomena which had formerly neither value nor connection. Hence it must be obvious to the most superficial thinker, that discovery consists either in the detention of some concealed relationsome deep seated affinity which baffles ordinary research, or of the discovery of simple fact, which is connected by slender ramifications with the subject to be investigated, but which, when once detected, carries us back by its divergence to all the phenomena which it embraces and explains.

"In order to give additional support to those views, it would be interesting to ascertain the general character of the process, by

which a mind of acknowledged power actually proceeds in the path of successful inquiry. The history of science does not furnish us with much information on this head, and if it is to be found at all it must be gleaned from the biographies of eminent men. Whatever this process may be in its details, if it has any, there cannot be the slightest doubt that, in its generalities at least it is the very reverse of the method of induction. The impatience of genius spurns the restraints of mischance rules, and will never submit to the plodding drudgery of inductive discipline. The discovery of a new fact unfits even a patient mind for deliberate inquiry. Conscious of having added to science what had escaped the sagacity of former ages, the ambitious discoverer invests his new acquisition with an importance which does not belong to it. He imagines a thousand consequences to flow from his discovery: he forms innumerable theories to explain it, and he exhausts his fancy in trying all its possible relations to recognized difficulties and unexplained facts, The views, however, thus freely given to his imagination, are speedily drawn up. His wildest conceptions are all subjected to the rigid test of experiment, and he has thus been hurried by the acumen of his own fancy into new and fertile paths far removed from ordinary observation. Here the peculiar character of his own genius displays itself by the invention of methods of trying his own speculations, and he is thus often led to new discoveries, far more important and general than that by which he began his inquiry. For a confirmation of these views we may refer to the history of Kepler's discoveries, and if we do not recognize them to the same extent in the labours of Newton, it is because he kept back his discoveries till they were nearly perfected, and therefore withheld the successive steps of his inquiries.

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"The modesty of Sir Isaac Newton in reference to his great discoveries was not founded on any indifference to the fame which they conferred, or upon any erroneous judgment of their importance to science, The whole of his life proves that he knew his place as a philosopher, and was determined to arrest and vindicate his rights. His modesty arose from the depth and extent of his knowledge, which showed him what a small portion of nature he had been able to examine, and how much remained to be explored in the same field in which he had himself laboured. In the magnitude of the comparison he recognized his own littleness, and a short time before his death he uttered this memorable sentence: 'I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.' What a lesson to the vanity and presumption of philosophers-to those especially who have