It was in this spirit that Robert Boyle worked in his Oxford laboratory, through the years of the Protectorate and on to the coming of Charles II. Slowly and laboriously, and very gently, careful not to offend those from whom he dissented, he amassed and examined evidences that were to break down the old mistaken notions of the Greek and mediæval philosophy, and to build up—a very little way, perhaps, but on a new and sure foundation—the mighty structure of physical and chemical science. Its golden keys were to be handed over to Isaac Newton and Dalton, and a long and brilliant line of workers in experimental science. What if Robert Boyle, in the seventeenth century, spoke of phosphorus as “nocte-luca” and of gaseous elasticity as “spring of the air?” Dr. Wilkins, of Wadham, was only then preparing his treatise on a Real Character.[208] As early as 1647, Boyle himself, then only twenty, wrote to Hartlib: “If the design of the Real Character take effect, it will in good part make amends to mankind for what their pride lost them at the tower of Babel.”[209] But even Dr. Wilkins’s Real Character would scarcely have been the vocabulary of to-day. Boyle’s Law, in whatever words he expressed it, remains incontrovertible.[210] What if he just missed the discovery of Hydrogen after actually collecting it in a receiver? The oversights of science are the inevitable dear companions of research. What if, after giving to science the definition of an element, as distinguished from a mixture or compound, he could not go further, with the means then at hand, by suggesting any one substance as elementary? None the less, he had realised and stated a great natural fact, founding thereby a new era in science. The “Elements” of the Ancients, that had terrified him in childhood, were to be broken up; their secrets were to be extorted from them, for the good of mankind. There is an echo of the old Genevan thunderstorm, and the older Benedicite, in Boerhaave’s eulogium of Boyle—“to him we owe the secrets of fire, air, water, animals, vegetables and frosts”; but in modern times, and in modern terms, Robert Boyle has had his recognition—

“In the days of the early Greeks, the word ‘element’ was applied rather to denote a property of matter than one of its constituents. Thus, when a substance was said to contain fire, air, water, and earth (of which terms a childish game, doubtless once played by all of us, is a relic), it probably meant that they partook of the nature of the so-called elements. Inflammability showed the presence of concealed fire; the escape of ‘airs’ when some substances are heated or when vegetable or animal matter is distilled, no doubt led to the idea that these airs were imprisoned in the matters from which they escaped; and hardness and permanence were ascribed to the presence of earth, while liquidity and fusibility were properties conveyed by the presence of concealed water. At a later date the ‘Spagyrics’ added three ‘hypostatical principles’ to the quadrilateral; these were ‘salt,’ ‘sulphur,’ and ‘mercury.’ The first conveyed solubility, and fixedness in fire; the second, inflammability, and the third, the power which some substances manifest of producing a liquid, generally termed ‘phlegm,’ on application of heat, or of themselves being converted into the liquid state by fusion.

“It was Robert Boyle, in his Skeptical Chymist, who first controverted these ancient and medieval notions, and who gave to the word ‘element’ the meaning that it now possesses—the constituent of a compound.”[211]

So the truths that Robert Boyle’s writings held forth have, in spite of opposition, established themselves, as he himself believed they would establish themselves, in the minds of men.

CHAPTER XIII
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY

“Died that arch rebell Oliver Cromwell, cal’d Protector.”—Evelyn’s Diary, Sept. 3, 1658.

“And if the common charity allowed to dead men be exercised towards him, in burying his faults in the grave with himself, and keeping alive the memory of his virtues and great aims and actions, he will be allowed to have his place amongst the worthiest of men, ... I doubt his loss will be a growing affliction upon these nations, and that we shall learn to value him more by missing him—a perverseness of our nature that teaches us, in every condition wherein we are, therewith to be discontent, by undervaluing what we have, and overvaluing what we have lost. I confess his performances reached not the making good of his professions; but I doubt his performances may go beyond the professions of those who may come after him.”—Lady Ranelagh to Lord Broghill, from Youghal, Sept. 17, 1658.

“O human glory vain! O death! O wings!

O worthless world! O transitory things!