Society, so sensible and liberal--published shortly before Glanvill's
book,--also contemplates the extension of science over the world.
Speaking of the prospect of future discoveries, he thinks it will partly
depend on the enlargement of the field of western civilisation "if this
mechanic genius which now prevails in these parts of Christendom shall
happen to spread wide amongst ourselves and other civil nations, or if
by some good fate it shall pass farther on to other countries that were
yet never fully civilised."

This then being imagin'd, that there may some lucky tide of civility
flow into those lands which are yet salvage, then will a double
improvement thence arise both in respect of ourselves and them. For even
the present skilful parts of mankind will be thereby made more skilful,
and the other will not only increase those arts which we shall bestow
upon them, but will also venture on new searches themselves.

He expects much from the new converts, on the ground that nations which
have been taught have proved more capable than their teachers, appealing
to the case of the Greeks who outdid their eastern masters, and to that
of the peoples of modern Europe who received their light from the Romans
but have "well nigh doubled the ancient stock of trades delivered to
their keeping."

5.

The establishment of the Royal Society in 1660 and the Academy of
Sciences in 1666 made physical science fashionable in London and Paris.
Macaulay, in his characteristic way, describes how "dreams of perfect
forms of government made way for dreams of wings with which men were to
fly from the Tower to the Abbey, and of double-keeled ships which were
never to founder in the fiercest storm. All classes were hurried along
by the prevailing sentiment. Cavalier and Roundhead, Churchman and
Puritan were for once allied. Divines, jurists, statesmen, nobles,
princes, swelled the triumph of the Baconian philosophy." The seeds sown
by Bacon had at last begun to ripen, and full credit was given to him by
those who founded and acclaimed the Royal Society. The ode which Cowley
addressed to that institution might have been entitled an ode in honour
of Bacon, or still better--for the poet seized the essential point of
Bacon's labours--a hymn on the liberation of the human mind from the
yoke of Authority.

Bacon has broke that scar-crow Deity.

Dryden himself, in the Annus Mirabilis, had turned aside from his
subject, the defeat of the D