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THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 341
the domain of theoretical knowledge: he brought the
method of investigation to such a clear and complete
development as, before his time, had never been accomplished.
BACON was neither the shallow vain prattler,
without any originality of thought, that he has been represented
by some, nor the creative genius out of whose head
science sprang in complete beauty, that others have
depicted him. He was, as it were, a hand on'the face of a
clock pointing out to us the progress made by time.
THE EXPERIMENTAL DIRECTION TAKEN BY THE
NATURAL SCIENCES, PHYSICS, AND CHEMISTRY
DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
THE expectations raised by the startling progress of the
natural sciences in the 16th, were most abundantly fulfilled
in the following, century. If men had hitherto confined
themselves to observing facts in nature and to taking a
firm mental grasp of the existence of things, they now
began to investigate their causes and to fathom their
reciprocal relations. They desired to become acquainted
with the processes of organic life in their development and
with this object they instituted experiments by which they
might imitate the workings of nature by artificial means.
Experiment advanced into the foreground and gave a
characteristic colouring to the mode of thought of the 17th
century. No path of intellectual activity was more influenced
by this than that of the natural sciences and medicine.
They have to thank this bias in favour of experiment for
the stimulus which led to new investigations and by it
they attained to that certainty of doctrine which is of the
essence of science. Physics, chemistry and physiology
those subjects, in fine, which are principally founded on
experiment—were at this period enriched with a great
number of discoveries. A new period of their history
began. Mineralogy, botany, zoology and anatomy also