XXXVI. On physical subjects, England has furnished a greater number of original authors, than all the other nations of Europe put together; and the French, who are very tenacious of the reputation of their country for producing men of ingenuity, are obliged to confess, that the English are superior to them in philosophical abilities. It may without rashness or exaggeration be said, that all the advances which have been made in physical knowledge for a century past, are owing to my Lord Chancellor Bacon. It was he that broke through the strait limits, within which, Physics till his time had been imprisoned; and he was the man who threw down the columns, on which to mark the boundaries of human knowledge in natural things, _ne plus ultra_ had been inscribed. The most learned Peter Gassendo, was nothing else but a faithful disciple of Bacon’s, and what Bacon had said in a summary way, he repeated more at large, in his extensive philosophical writings. All that Descartes said which was of any real value, he took from Bacon. After Bacon, we may reckon as great originals, Mr. Boyle, and the most subtil Sir Isaac Newton; as also John Locke[2], Sir Kenelm Digby, and many others; but the misfortune is, that the lustre of their ingenuity, was tarnished with the same religious blemish my Lord Bacon’s was; and when they had once strayed out of the right path, they flew with such velocity, that the extent of their wanderings, was great as the liveliness of their imaginations. But with all this, there has not been wanting in England, since it was blemished with heresy, a Sir Thomas More, who was as celebrated for his Catholic constancy, as he was for his eminence in the sciences. XXXVII. I must also say, that I have always observed in the English philosophers, great frankness, and that they gave a simple plain relation of the result of their experience and labours, free from all artifice and deceit; which is a thing not very common with those of other nations; and I have remarked this particularly, in Bacon, Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, and Sydenham the physician; and it has afforded me great pleasure, to see, how without boasting they have declared what they know, and without blushing, have confessed what they are ignorant of. This is the true mark and characteristic of sublime geniuses. Oh! how much it is to be lamented, that such great lights, should be obscured by heretical prejudices! END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME. FOOTNOTES