94 Francis Bacon.

nomena, yet treats their leading thinkers with due re-
spect, acknowledging that " from them the stream of
wisdom has descended to posterity;" while he adds,
" hut our age has discovered and "brought to light many
things which they, if they were alive, would gladly
embrace." Tracing the progress of thought from the
simplicity and ignorance of the early speculators to
Aristotle and Galen, he expresses his disapproval of
the host of commentators who perverted their masters'
teaching, laments " the shipwreck of science in the
deluge of Goths," and rejoices at " its revival in the
time of our grandfathers." The later age, he says, "has
exploded the barbarians and restored the Greeks and
Latins to their pristine honour.7' If these, too, are
responsible for errors that still mislead us, the remedy
is to be found in science again taking its start from
observation and experiment, in attending to the pro-
ductive processes, " frugifera instituta," of Nature her-
self. The results of his own inductions l pursued on
this principle are, as far as they go, remarkably correct.
He not only laid down the main facts of magnetism—
&<;., clearly recognising its polarity—but had obviously
grasped the parallel between it and electricity; and in
his assertion that the earth itself is subject to the same
laws as the artificial magnet, his " Terella," he had

1 There can be little doubt that Gilbert was a Coperuican. Some-
times he speaks as if any other view were absurd. I)r Whewell
asserts that, inaintainiug the diurnal, he hesitated about the annual,
rotation of the earth ; but Mr Hallam points out that his argument
for the one extends to the other. " Cum natura semper agit per
pauciora magis quam plura; atque ration! magis consentaneum
videtur \rnum exigimm corpus telluris diurnain volntationcm efficere
quam munduui totiuu circumferri."