n into it was an abjuration of all faith, and a
resolution to inquire into the truth. These societies extricated the
cultivators of science from the isolation in which they had hitherto
lived, and, by promoting their intercommunication and union, imparted
activity and strength to them all.

Returning now from this digression, this historical sketch of the
circumstances under which science was introduced into Europe, I pass to
the consideration of its manner of action and its results.

INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE. The influence of science on modern
civilization has been twofold: 1. Intellectual; 2. Economical. Under
these titles we may conveniently consider it.

Intellectually it overthrew the authority of tradition. It refused to
accept, unless accompanied by proof, the dicta of any master, no matter
how eminent or honored his name. The conditions of admission into
the Italian Accademia del Cimento, and the motto adopted by the Royal
Society of London, illustrate the position it took in this respect.

It rejected the supernatural and miraculous as evidence in physical
discussions. It abandoned sign-proof such as the Jews in old days
required, and denied that a demonstration can be given through an
illustration of something else, thus casting aside the logic that had
been in vogue for many centuries.

In physical inquiries, its mode of procedure was, to test the value of
any proposed hypothesis, by executing computations in any special case
on the basis or principle of that hypothesis, and then, by performing an
experiment or making an observation, to ascertain whether the result
of these agreed with the result of the computation. If it did not, the
hypothesis was to be rejected.

We may here introduce an illustration or two of this mode of procedure:

THEORIES OF GRAVITATION AND PHLOGISTON. Newton, suspecting that the
influence of the earth's attraction, gravity, may extend as far as the
moon, and be the force that causes her to revolve in her orbit round the
earth, calculated that, by her motion in her orbit, she was deflected
from the tangent thirteen feet every minute; but, by ascertaining the
space through which bodies would fall in one minute at the earth's
surface, and supposing it to be diminished in the ratio of the inverse
square, it appeared that the attraction at the moon's orbit would draw
a body through more than fifteen feet. He, therefore, for the time,
considered his hypothesis as unsustaine