e, went down to the foundations of scientific certainty, but,
in his 'Principes de Philosophie,' indicated where the goal of
physical science really lay. However, Descartes was an eminent
mathematician, and it would seem that the bent of his mind led him to
overestimate the value of deductive reasoning from general principles,
as much as Bacon had underestimated it. The progress of physical
science has been effected neither by Baconians nor by Cartesians, as
such, but by men like Galileo and Harvey, Boyle and Newton, who would
have done their work just as well if neither Bacon nor Descartes had
ever propounded their views respecting the manner in which scientific
investigation should be pursued.

[Sidenote: For a time the progress without fruits.]

The progress of science, during the first century after Bacon's death,
by means verified his sanguine prediction of the fruits which it would
yield. For, though the revived and renewed study of nature had spread
and grown to an extent which surpassed reasonable expectation, the
practical results--the 'good to men's estate'--were, at first, by no
means apparent. Sixty years after Bacon's death, Newton had crowned
the long labors of the astronomers and the physicists, by coordinating
the phenomena of solar motion throughout the visible universe into one
vast system; but the 'Principia' helped no man to either wealth or
comfort. Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz had opened up new worlds to
the mathematician, but the acquisitions of their genius enriched only
man's ideal estate. Descartes had laid the foundations of rational
cosmogony and of physiological psychology; Boyle had produced models
of experimentation in various branches of physics and chemistry;
Pascal and Torricelli had weighed the air; Malpighi and Grew, Ray and
Willoughby had done work of no less importance in the biological
sciences; but weaving and spinning were carried on with the old
appliances; nobody could travel faster by sea or by land than at any
previous time in the world's history, and King George could send a
message from London to York no faster than King John might have done.
Metals were worked from their ores by immemorial rule of thumb, and
the centre of the iron trade of these islands was still among the oak
forests of Sussex. The utmost skill of our mechanicians did not get
beyond the production of a coarse watch.

The middle of the eighteenth century is illustrated by a host of great
names in sci