The history of civilization is written in the triumphs which are won by scientific invention over the physical laws of nature, and over the mental infirmities of inferior human tribes. These multiply at points in space, and periods of time, most happily adapted to promote the progress and welfare of mankind. The manufacture of glass windows, chimneys, clocks, paper, the mariner's compass, fire-arms, watches, and saw-mills, with the process of printing with movable types, and the use of the telescope, comprise nearly all the inventions of importance which were made during the lapse of twelve centuries; all the best of which appeared near the close of the mediæval period, and were not a little indebted to information obtained from Mohammedans through the crusades. In the gradual development of human destiny occur flourishing periods, when numerous men of genius are clustered together with mutual dependence, and in a narrow space. For instance, Tycho, the founder of the new measuring system of astronomy, Kepler, Galileo, and Lord Bacon of Verulam, were cotemporaries; and all of them, except the first, lived to see the works of Descartes and Fermat. The true celestial system was discovered by Copernicus in the same year in which Columbus died, fourteen years after the grandest mundane discovery was made. The sudden appearance and disappearance of three new stars which occurred in 1572, 1600, and 1604, excited the wonder of vast assemblies of people, all over Europe, while humble artizans, in an obscure corner thereof, were constructing an instrument which should at once calm their fears and excite the most absorbing astonishment. The telescope was discovered in Holland, in 1608, and two years after the immortal Florentine astronomer began to shine prominently above all other leaders of sublime science. Galileo was the Huss of mediæval progress, if it be not better to call him the Columbus. The day of predestined freedom rose over his cradle, and his life-struggle struck the hour. His hand kindled brighter lamps in the great temple of knowledge, and, sublime priest of true evangelism as he was, it was fitting that his place and mission were so central, when he held aloft supremest light. We love to read the history of his mighty spirit, and contemplate the serene old man, blinded by gazing at stars, bereaved of his pious daughter, dragged to the dungeon of the Inquisition, and there visited by the future secretary of the English Commonwealth. In his own great maxim, that "we can not teach truth to another, we can only help him to find it," is contained the germ of all true wisdom, and the foundation of those future inductions which were to underlie a new age and revolutionize the world.
Sir Isaac Newton was born the same year Galileo died; and while we do not forget that Florence was the great centre of science, as of literature and art during the age of Leo X., let us glance more particularly at this point to the results which so constantly tended toward the western extreme.
We have already alluded to many of the developments which illuminated the night of ignorance, broke the yoke of superstition, gave to doubt a salutary force, and redoubled the acute delights of scientific investigation. The wonders of remote hemispheres were simultaneously unfolded, when Columbus and Vasco de Gama, at one stroke, overthrew the old geological and geographical systems. Before the close of the sixteenth century few of the mysteries of nature were left unvailed, and all that remained for posterity was the work of enlarged classification, and the perfection of each separate science. The progress made was, in fact, immense. As the botanic gardens, at that time planted in the new Italian universities, were fragrant with a thousand exotics, unknown to antiquity, so the softest fabrics, and most delicious fruits, recalled to memory the concurrent events of Providence, which for a long time made Venice and Genoa the emporia of mediæval traffic. Every luxury of the old world, which commerce converted into a comfort for the new, is a memento of the discoveries which guided navigation in the remotest seas, and carried European adventurers so far as to make the treasures of the entire globe our own. The science of political economy was also the offspring of that increased commercial activity which has so much affected the character of nations as to render new combinations of philosophy necessary for their direction. We only need allude to the fact that the free cities of Italy were compelled to yield the leadership in commerce to freer Holland, and that the sceptre of the seas was finally won by England; and that the first published theory of political economy was given to the world in Raleigh's essay, which Quesnoy long after attempted in vain to refute.
Agriculture was greatly improved in England under the early civilizers of the Anglo-Norman race. Immediately after the conquest, many thousand husbandmen, from the fertile plains of Flanders and Normandy, obtained farms, and employed the same methods of cultivation which had proved so successful in their native country. The ecclesiastics rivaled the secular ranks in this noble work. It was so much the custom of the monks to assist in open fields, especially at seed-time, the hay season, and harvest, that the famous á Becket, even after he was Archbishop of Canterbury, used to sally out with the inmates of the convents, and take part with them in all rural occupations. It was decreed by the General Council of Lateran, that "all presbyters, clerks, monks, converts, pilgrims, and peasants, when they are engaged in the labors of husbandry, shall, together with the cattle in their plows, and the seed which they carry into the field, enjoy perfect security; and that all who molest and interrupt them, if they do not desist when they have been admonished, shall be excommunicated." Nearly all the finest garden-lands in England were redeemed from the worst natural condition by the sagacious and industrious Benedictine religionists. The science they applied in cathedral building is wonderful to the wisest engineers of our own age, and their taste in landscape-gardening has ever been the best in the world. Their ruined abbeys stand in the loveliest positions, and all their great churches, and colleges, unlike the continental, are encompassed by trees, and exquisitely decorated grounds. Ingulfus, abbot of Croyland, supplies an early and characteristic instance of this general disposition. Richard de Rules, director of Deeping, he tells us, being fond of agriculture, obtained permission to inclose a large portion of marsh, for the purpose of separate pasture, excluding the Welland by a strong dike, upon which he erected a town, and rendered those stagnant fens a garden of Eden. Others followed their example, and divided the marshes among them; when some converting them to tillage, some reserving them for meadow, others leaving them in pasture, found a rich soil for every purpose.
Evelyn records how four kinds of grapes were early brought from Italy, with a choice species of white figs, and were naturalized in his vapory clime. The learned Linacre first brought the damask-rose from the south; and, at the same time, the royal fruit gardens were enriched with plums of three different kinds. Edward Grindal, afterward primate at Canterbury, returning from exile, translated thither the medicinal plant of the tamarisk. The first oranges were grown by the Carew family, in Surrey; and the cherry orchards of Kent were commenced about Sittingbourne. British commerce brought the currant-bush from the island of Zante, and lettuce from Cos. Cherries came from Cerasuntis, in Pontus; the peach, from Persia; the chestnut from Castagna, a town of Magnesia; and the damson plum from Damascus. Lucullus, after the war with Mithridates, introduced cherries from Pontus into Italy, where they were rapidly propagated, and, twenty-six years afterward, Pliny relates, the cherry-tree passed over into Britain. Thus a victory gained by a Roman consul over a remote antagonist, with whom it would seem that the western isle could not have the remotest interest, was the real cause of her being ultimately enriched. Such is the law of providential dealing, and such are the means and the path it pursues. In 1609, Shakspeare planted his celebrated mulberry-tree, a production before almost unknown. Since that epoch, vast treasures of literature, art, and science have accumulated on that soil, but few new germs have originated there.
Nearly all the roots of England's maturest science run back into the deepest mediæval night. A worthy associate with Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, and Michael Scot, was the celebrated Roger Bacon, a native of Somersetshire, who flourished in the thirteenth century. This Franciscan monk seems to have been a "Phœnix of intellects" in the fundamental education of the English race, "an old and new library of all that was good in science." He greatly established and extended the natural sciences, by means of mathematics, and the production of phenomena in the way of experiments. To him especially credit is due, that the influence which he exercised upon the mode of treating natural studies, was more beneficial and of more lasting effect than the discoveries themselves which have been attributed to him. Says Humboldt, "He roused himself to independent thought, and strongly blamed the blind trust in the authority of the schools: yet he was so far from neglecting to search into Grecian antiquity, that he prizes the study of comparative philology, the application of mathematics, and the 'Scientia Experimentalis,' to which he devotes a particular section in his great work. One of the popes, Clement IV., defended and patronized him; but two others, Nicholas II. and IV., accused him of magic, and cast him into prison, and thus he experienced the reverses of fortune which have been felt by great men of all times. He was acquainted with the Optics of Ptolemæus and the Almagest. As he always calls Hipparchus 'Abraxis,' like the Arabs, we may conclude that he had only made use of a Latin translation of the Arabic work. Besides Bacon's chemical investigations respecting combustible and explosive mixtures, his theoretical optical works upon Perspective, and the position of the focus in a concave mirror, are the most important."
It is interesting to contemplate this thoughtful recluse prosecuting lofty studies in his solitary cell at Oxford. Around him was rising that greatest of western universities, scarcely one college of which, according to its historian, Doctor Ingram, can be considered a royal foundation. Great commoners, architects of their own fortunes, like the butcher's son, Wolsey, and the poor stone-mason, William of Wykcham, reared the amplest halls, and educated the mightiest minds. In the front rank of these great benefactors of science stood Roger Bacon, greatest of his own age, and projector of nearly all that followed. His writings contain many curious facts and judicious observations. From the following statement it would appear that he anticipated his brother monk on the continent in the discovery of gunpowder: "From saltpetre and other ingredients," he says, "we are able to form a fire which will burn to any distance." And again, alluding to its effects, "a small portion of matter, about the size of the thumb, properly disposed, will make a tremendous sound and coruscation, by which cities and armies might be destroyed." One of his biographers ascribes to him a mechanical contrivance which prepared the way for the important invention of the air-pump. In his own words, we have the following anticipations of nearly all the grand inventions which have more recently changed the condition and aspect of the scientific world: "I will mention," he says, "things which may be done without the help of magic, such as indeed magic is unable and incapable of performing; for a vessel may be so constructed as to make more way with one man in her, than another vessel well manned. It is possible to make a chariot which, without any assistance of animals, shall move with the irresistible force which is ascribed to those scythed chariots in which the ancients fought. It is possible to make instruments for flying, so that a man sitting in the middle thereof, and steering with a kind of rudder, may manage what is contrived to answer the end of wings, so as to divide and pass through the air. It is no less possible to make a machine of a very small size, and yet capable of raising or sinking the greatest weights, which may be of infinite use on certain occasions, for by the help of such an instrument not above three inches high, or less, a man may be able to deliver himself and his companions out of prison, and he and his companions may descend at pleasure. Yea, instruments may be fabricated by which one man shall draw a thousand men to him by force and against their will, as also machines which will enable men to walk without danger at the bottom of seas and rivers."
The above possibilities, as they were suggested in the thirteenth century, have already in good part been realized, justifying the prophecies of a man who was before his age, but on the course of its progress. He beheld the drifting of the great seas of humanity, and knew not how far they might roll, but he was conscious that forward they must go. He was the Savonarola of his land and age, the martyr of science, who possessed his soul in patience, uttered his word, and waited, knowing that his despised sentence would one day be esteemed as of the finest gold. Mr. Brande observes, that one of his principal works "breathes sentiments which would do honor to the most refined periods of science, and in which many of the advantages likely to be derived from the mode of investigation insisted upon by his great successor (Chancellor Bacon) are anticipated." This remark might have been still more prospective, for the celebrated French experimentalist, Homberg, availing himself of some hints of chemical combinations suggested by Roger Bacon, at a much later period, made some important discoveries in that science.
As soon as printing was perfected on the banks of the Rhine, it was brought to the banks of the Thames, and, in 1474, the first press in England was erected by Caxton in Westminster Abbey. Thus the higher process supervenes upon the inferior which prepared the way, and supersedes the sources of its own origin and support. In the ancient Scriptorium of the Abbey, where all literature had been transcribed, and all science then extant found refuge till more auspicious times, was carried on an art which was the embodiment of anterior thought, and the guaranty of a future culture infinitely intensified and enlarged. As early as 1480, books were printed at St. Albans; and in 1525, there was a translation of Bœthius printed in the monastery of Tavistock, by Thomas Richards, monk of the same monastery. That the intercourse of Caxton with the Abbot of Westminster was on a familiar footing we learn from his own statement, in 1490: "My Lord Abbott of Westminster did shew to me late certain evidences written in old English, for to reduce it to our English now used."
To receive the contributions of the past and reduce them to more efficient use in the present and for the future, is the mission of every agent of Providence like Caxton, Roger Bacon, or that gifted son of St. Albans whose dust lies buried near the venerable Abbey, where the second press of old England was set at work within the church, while he thought and wrote without. Francis Bacon was the complement of Aristotle. Both were adapted to their respective ages, and were requisite to each other. Had not the great Greek speculated, the greater Englishman would never have made his demonstrations. The first developed the general form of all reasoning, and the second made a specific application of this to the phenomena of matter. But the deductive mode is only one of the phases of dialectics; and the Baconians of the present day are much in the same position with regard to moral science, that the Aristotelians were in with respect to matter science. A third method was necessitated by the superior worth of the second, and the nations at large await the man to come who shall exhaust the whole doctrine of method, and this will doubtless be consummated in the same direction which scientific excellence has hitherto pursued.