Part 6 (1/2)
In one point indeed Hakewill goes far beyond Bodin. It was suggested, as we saw, by the French thinker that in some respects the modern age is superior in conduct and morals to antiquity, but he said little on the matter. Hakewill develops the suggestion at great length into a severe and partial impeachment of ancient manners and morals. Unjust and unconvincing though his arguments are, and inspired by theological motives, his thesis nevertheless deserves to be noted as an a.s.sertion of the progress of man in social morality. Bacon, and the thinkers of the seventeenth century generally, confined their views of progress in the past to the intellectual field. Hakewill, though he overshot the mark and said nothing actually worth remembering, nevertheless antic.i.p.ated the larger problem of social progress which was to come to the front in the eighteenth century.
4.
During the forty years that followed the appearance of Hakewill's book much had happened in the world of ideas, and when we take up Glanvill's Plus ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the days of Aristotle, [Footnote: The t.i.tle is evidently suggested by a pa.s.sage in Bacon quoted above, p. 55.] we breathe a different atmosphere. It was published in 1668, and its purpose was to defend the recently founded Royal Society which was attacked on the ground that it was inimical to the interests of religion and sound learning. For the Aristotelian tradition was still strongly entrenched in the English Church and Universities, notwithstanding the influence of Bacon; and the Royal Society, which realised ”the romantic model” of Bacon's society of experimenters, repudiated the scholastic principles and methods a.s.sociated with Aristotle's name.
Glanvill was one of those lat.i.tudinarian clergymen, so common in the Anglican Church in the seventeenth century, who were convinced that religious faith must accord with reason, and were unwilling to abate in its favour any of reason's claims. He was under the influence of Bacon, Descartes, and the Cambridge Platonists, and no one was more enthusiastic than he in following the new scientific discoveries of his time. Unfortunately for his reputation he had a weak side. Enlightened though he was, he was a firm believer in witchcraft, and he is chiefly remembered not as an admirer of Descartes and Bacon, and a champion of the Royal Society, but as the author of Saducismus Triumphatus, a monument of superst.i.tion, which probably contributed to check the gradual growth of disbelief in witches and apparitions.
His Plus ultra is a review of modern improvements of useful knowledge.
It is confined to mathematics and science, in accordance with its purpose of justifying the Royal Society; and the discoveries of the past sixty years enable the author to present a far more imposing picture of modern scientific progress than was possible for Bodin or Bacon.
[Footnote: Bacon indeed could have made out a more impressive picture of the new age if he had studied mathematics and taken the pains to master the evidence which was revolutionising astronomy. Glanvill had the advantage of comprehending the importance of mathematics for the advance of physical science.] He had absorbed Bacon's doctrine of utility. His spirit is displayed in the remark that more grat.i.tude is due to the unknown inventor of the mariners' compa.s.s
”than to a thousand Alexanders and Caesars, or to ten times the number of Aristotles. And he really did more for the increase of knowledge and the advantage of the world by this one experiment than the numerous subtile disputers that have lived ever since the erection of the school of talking.”
Glanvill, however, in his complacency with what has already been accomplished, is not misled into over-estimating its importance. He knows that it is indeed little compared with the ideal of attainable knowledge. The human design, to which it is the function of the Royal Society to contribute, is laid as low, he says, as the profoundest depths of nature, and reaches as high as the uppermost storey of the universe, extends to all the varieties of the great world, and aims at the benefit of universal mankind. Such a work can only proceed slowly, by insensible degrees. It is an undertaking wherein all the generations of men are concerned, and our own age can hope to do little more than to remove useless rubbish, lay in materials, and put things in order for the building. ”We must seek and gather, observe and examine, and lay up in bank for the ages that come after.”
These lines on ”the vastness of the work” suggest to the reader that a vast future will be needed for its accomplishment. Glanvill does not dwell on this, but he implies it. He is evidently unembarra.s.sed by the theological considerations which weighed so heavily on Hakewill. He does not trouble himself with the question whether Anti-Christ has still to appear. The difference in general outlook between these two clergymen is an indication how the world had travelled in the course of forty years.
Another point in Glanvill's little book deserves attention. He takes into his prospect the inhabitants of the Transatlantic world; they, too, are to share in the benefits which shall result from the subjugation of nature.
”By the gaining that mighty continent and the numerous fruitful isles beyond the Atlantic, we have obtained a larger field of nature, and have thereby an advantage for more phenomena, and more helps both for knowledge and for life, which 'tis very like that future ages will make better use of to such purposes than those hitherto have done; and that science also may at last travel into those parts and enrich Peru with a more precious treasure than that of its golden mines, is not improbable.”
Sprat, the Bishop of Rochester, in his interesting History of the Royal Society, so sensible and liberal--published shortly before Glanvill's book,--also contemplates the extension of science over the world.
Speaking of the prospect of future discoveries, he thinks it will partly depend on the enlargement of the field of western civilisation ”if this mechanic genius which now prevails in these parts of Christendom shall happen to spread wide amongst ourselves and other civil nations, or if by some good fate it shall pa.s.s farther on to other countries that were yet never fully civilised.”
This then being imagin'd, that there may some lucky tide of civility flow into those lands which are yet salvage, then will a double improvement thence arise both in respect of ourselves and them. For even the present skilful parts of mankind will be thereby made more skilful, and the other will not only increase those arts which we shall bestow upon them, but will also venture on new searches themselves.
He expects much from the new converts, on the ground that nations which have been taught have proved more capable than their teachers, appealing to the case of the Greeks who outdid their eastern masters, and to that of the peoples of modern Europe who received their light from the Romans but have ”well nigh doubled the ancient stock of trades delivered to their keeping.”
5.
The establishment of the Royal Society in 1660 and the Academy of Sciences in 1666 made physical science fas.h.i.+onable in London and Paris.
Macaulay, in his characteristic way, describes how ”dreams of perfect forms of government made way for dreams of wings with which men were to fly from the Tower to the Abbey, and of double-keeled s.h.i.+ps which were never to founder in the fiercest storm. All cla.s.ses were hurried along by the prevailing sentiment. Cavalier and Roundhead, Churchman and Puritan were for once allied. Divines, jurists, statesmen, n.o.bles, princes, swelled the triumph of the Baconian philosophy.” The seeds sown by Bacon had at last begun to ripen, and full credit was given to him by those who founded and acclaimed the Royal Society. The ode which Cowley addressed to that inst.i.tution might have been ent.i.tled an ode in honour of Bacon, or still better--for the poet seized the essential point of Bacon's labours--a hymn on the liberation of the human mind from the yoke of Authority.
Bacon has broke that scar-crow Deity.
Dryden himself, in the Annus Mirabilis, had turned aside from his subject, the defeat of the Dutch and England's mastery of the seas, to pay a compliment to the Society, and to prophesy man's mastery of the universe.
Instructed s.h.i.+ps shall sail to rich commerce, By which remotest regions are allied; Which makes one city of the universe, Where some may gain and all may be supplied.
Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go, And view the ocean leaning on the sky, From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, And on the lunar world securely pry.
[Footnote: It may be noted that John Wilkins (Bishop of Chester) published in 1638 a little book ent.i.tled Discovery of a New World, arguing that the moon is inhabited. A further edition appeared in 1684.
He attempted to compose a universal language (Sprat, Hist. of Royal Society, p. 251). His Mercury or the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641) contains proposals for a universal script (chap. 13). There is also an ingenious suggestion for the communication of messages by sound, which might be described as an antic.i.p.ation of the Morse code. Wilkins and another divine, Seth Ward, the Bishop of Salisbury, belonged to the group of men who founded the Royal Society.]
Men did not look far into the future; they did not dream of what the world might be a thousand or ten thousand years hence. They seem to have expected quick results. Even Sprat thinks that ”the absolute perfection of the true philosophy” is not far off, seeing that ”this first great and necessary preparation for its coming”--the inst.i.tution of scientific co-operation--has been accomplished. Superficial and transient though the popular enthusiasm was, it was a sign that an age of intellectual optimism had begun, in which the science of nature would play a leading role.
CHAPTER V. THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE: FONTENELLE