the
Royal Society, was the almost infantine simplicity of its earliest
members, led on by their honest zeal; and the absence of all
discernment in many trifling and ludicrous researches, which called
down the malice of the wits;[257] there was, too, much of that unjust
contempt between the parties, which students of opposite pursuits and
tastes so liberally bestow on each other. The researches of the
Antiquarian Society were sneered at by the Royal, and the antiquaries
avenged themselves by their obstinate incredulity at the prodigies of
the naturalists; the student of classical literature was equally
slighted by the new philosophers; who, leaving the study of words and
the elegancies of rhetoric for the study merely of things, declared as
the cynical ancient did of metaphors, "Poterimus vivere sine
illis"--We can do very well without them! The ever-witty South, in his
oration at Oxford, made this poignant reflection on the Royal
Society--"Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos, et seipsos." They
can admire nothing except fleas, lice, and themselves! And even Hobbes
so little comprehended the utility of these new pursuits, that he
considered the Royal Society merely as so many labourers, who, when
they had washed their hands after their work, should leave to others
the polishing of their discourses. He classed them, in the way they
were proceeding, with apothecaries, and gardeners, and mechanics, who
might now "all put in for, and get the prize." Even at a later period,
Sir William Temple imagined the virtuosi to be only so many Sir
Nicholas Gimcracks; and contemptuously called them, from the place of
their first meeting, "the Men of Gresham!" doubtless considering them
as wise as "the Men of Gotham!" Even now, men of other tempers and
other studies are too apt to refuse the palm of philosophy to the
patient race of naturalists.[258] Wotton, who wrote so zealously at
the commencement of the last century in favour of modern knowledge, is
alarmed lest the effusions of wit, in his time, should "deaden the
industry of the philosophers of the next age; for," he adds, "nothing
wounds so effectually as a jest; and when men once become ridiculous,
their labours will be slighted, and they will find few imitators." The
alarm shows his zeal, but not his discernment: since curiosity in
hidden causes is a passion which endures with human nature. "The
philosophers of the next age" have shown themselves as persevering as
their predece