The fact of this influence has been somewhat obscured by the modern dispute as to whether he had any important influence on scientific progress. [125] At first sight the old claim for him in that regard seems to be heavily discounted by the simple fact that he definitely rejected the Copernican system of astronomy. [126] Though, however, this gravely emphasizes his fallibility, it does not cancel his services as a stimulator of scientific thought. At that time only a few were yet intelligently convinced Copernicans; and we have the record of how, in Bacon's day, Harvey lost heavily in credit and in his medical practice by propounding his discovery of the circulation of the blood, [127] which, it is said, no physician over forty years old at that time believed in. For the scientific men of that century--and only among them did Copernicanism find the slightest acceptance--it was thus no fatal shortcoming in Bacon to have failed to grasp the true scheme of sidereal motion, any more than it was in Galileo to be wrong about the tides and comets. They could realize that it was precisely in astronomy, for lack of special study and expert knowledge, that Bacon was least qualified to judge. Intellectual influence on science is not necessarily dependent on actual scientific achievement, though that of course furthers and establishes it; and the fact of Bacon's impact on the mind of the next age is abundantly proved by testimonies. For a time the explicit tributes came chiefly from abroad; though at all times, even in the first shock of his disgrace, there were Englishmen perfectly convinced of his greatness. To the winning of foreign favour he had specially addressed himself in his adversity. Grown wary in act as well as wise in theory, he deleted from the Latin De Augmentis a whole series of passages of the Advancement of Learning which disparaged Catholics and Catholicism; [128] and he had his reward in being appreciated by many Jesuit and other Catholic scholars. [129] But Protestants such as Comenius and Leibnitz were ere long more emphatic than any Catholics; [130] and at the time of the Restoration we find Bacon enthusiastically praised among the more open-minded and scientifically biassed thinkers of England, who included some zealous Christians. [131] It was not that his special "method" enabled them to reach important results with any new facility; its impracticability is now insisted on by friends as well as foes. [132] It was that he arraigned with extraordinary psychological insight and brilliance of phrase the mental vices which had made discoveries so rare; the alternate self-complacency and despair of the average indolent mind; the "opinion of store" which was "cause of want"; the timid or superstitious evasion of research. In all this he was using his own highest powers, his comprehension of human character and his genius for speech. And though his own scientific results were not to be compared with those of Galileo and