With the Reformation this idea spread to France. In 1560 we find the States-General of Orleans suggesting to Francis II a "levée d'une contribution sur les bénéfices ecclésiastiques pour raisonablement stipendier des pédagogues et gens lettrés, en toutes villes et villages, pour l'instruction de la pauvre jeunesse du plat pays, et soient tenus les pères et mères, à peine d'amende, à envoyer les dits enfants à l'école, et à ce faire soient contraints par les segnieurs et les juges ordinaires."
Two years after this suggestion, however, the religious wars broke out; the material interests of the clerical party had predominated, the new spirit was crushed under the iron heel of priestcraft, and the French, in consequence, had to wait for three centuries and a revolution before they could get comparatively free.
In the universities, or at all events alongside them, we find next the introduction not so much yet of science as we now know it, with its experimental side, as of the scientific spirit.
The history of the Collége de France, founded in 1531 by Francis I, is of extreme interest. In the fifteenth century the studies were chiefly literary, and except in the case of a few minds they were confined merely to scholastic subtleties, taught (I have it on the authority of the Statistique de l'Enseignement Supérieur) in barbarous Latin. This was the result of the teaching of the faculties; but even then, outside the faculties, which were immutable, a small number of distinguished men still occupied themselves in a less rigid way in investigation; but still these studies were chiefly literary. Among those men may be mentioned Danès, Postel, Dole, Guillaume Budé, Lefèvre d'Étaples, and others, who edited with notes and commentaries Greek and Latin authors whom the university scarcely knew by name. Hence the renaissance of the sixteenth century, which gave birth to the Collége de France, the function of which, at the commencement, was to teach those things which were not in the ordinary curriculum of the faculties. It was called the Collége des Deux Langues, the languages being Hebrew and Greek. It then became the Collége des Trois Langues, when the king, notwithstanding the opposition of the university, created in 1534 a chair of Latin. There was another objection made by the university to the new creation: from the commencement the courses were free; and this feeling was not decreased by the fact that around the celebrated masters of the Trois Langues a crowd of students was soon congregated.
The idea in the mind of Francis I in creating this Royal College may be gathered from the following edict, dated in 1545: "François, etc., savoir faisons à tous présents et à venir que Nous, considérant que le sçavoir des langues, qui est un des dons du Saint-Esprit, fait ouverture et donne le moyen de plus entière connaissance et plus parfaite intelligence de toutes bonnes, honnêtes, saintes et salutaires sciences.... Avons fait faire pleinement entendre à ceux qui, y voudraient vacquer, les trois langues principales, Hébraïque, Grecque, et Latine, et les Livres esquels les bonnes sciences sont le mieux et le plus profondément traitées. A laquelle fin, et en suivant le décret du concile de Vienne, nous avons piéça ordonné et establi en nôtre bonne ville de Paris, un bonne nombre de personnages de sçavoir excellent, qui lisent et enseignent publiquement et ordinairement les dites langues et sciences, maintenant florissantautant ou plus qu'elles ne firent de bien longtemps ... auxquels nos lecteurs avons donné honnêtes gages et salaires, et iceux fait pourvoir de plusieurs beaux bénéfices pour les entretenir et donner occasion de mieux et plus continuellement entendre au fait de leur charge, ... etc."
The Statistique, which I am following in this account, thus sums up the founder's intention: "Le Collége Royal avait pour mission de propager les nouvelles connaissances, les nouvelles découvertes. Il n'enseignait pas la science faite, il la faisait."
It was on account of this more than on account of anything else that it found its greatest enemy in the university. The founding of this new college, and the great excitement its success occasioned in Paris, were, there can be little doubt, among the factors which induced Gresham to found his college in London in 1574.
These two institutions played a great part in their time. Gresham College, it is true, was subsequently strangled, but not before its influence had been such as to permit the Royal Society to rise phœnixlike from its ashes; for it is on record that the first step in the forming of this society was taken after a lecture on astronomy by Sir Christopher Wren at the college. All connected with them felt in time the stupendous change of thought in the century which saw the birth of Bacon, Galileo, Gilbert, Hervey, Tycho Brahe, Descartes, and many others that might be named; and of these, it is well to remark, Gilbert,[41] Hervey, and Galileo were educated in medical schools abroad.
Bacon was not only the first to lay down regulæ philosophandi, but he insisted upon the far-reaching results of research, not forgetting to point out that "lucifera experimenta, non fructifera quærenda,"[42] as a caution to the investigator, though he had no doubt as to the revolution to be brought about by the ultimate application of the results of physical inquiry.
As early as 1560 the Academia Secretorum Naturæ was founded at Naples, followed by the Lincei in 1609, the Royal Society in 1645, the Cimento in 1657, and the Paris Academy in 1666.