It has been said that we are indebted to Sir Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth's Chancellor, for the inductive method of studying the phenomena of nature. Bacon's merit lies in the fact that he not only minutely analyzed the method, pointing out its uses and abuses, but also that he showed it to be the only one by which we can attain an accurate knowledge of the physical world around us. His sententious eulogy went forth to the world of scholars invested with all the importance, authority and dignity which the high position and worldwide fame of the philosophic Chancellor could give it. But while Bacon thought and wrote in his study, Gilbert labored and toiled in his workshop. By his pen, Bacon made a profound impression on the philosophic mind of his age; by his researches, Gilbert explored two provinces of nature and added them to the domain of science. Bacon was a theorist, Gilbert an investigator. For twenty years he shunned the glare of society and the throbbing excitement of public life; he wrenched himself away from all but the strictest exigencies of his profession, in order to devote himself undistractedly to the pursuit of science. And all this forty years before the appearance of Bacon's _Novum Organum_, the very work which contains the philosopher's "large thoughts and lofty phrases" on the value of experiment as a means for the advancement of learning. During that long period Gilbert haunted Colchester, where he delved into the secrets of nature and prepared the materials for his great work on the magnet. The publication of this Latin treatise made him known in the universities at home and especially abroad: he was appreciated by all the great physicists and mathematicians of his age; by such men as Sir Kenelm Digby; by William Barlowe, a great "magneticall" man; by Kepler, the astronomer, who adopted and defended his views; by Galileo himself, who said: "I extremely admire and envy the author of _De Magnete_." The science of magnetism owes more to Gilbert than to any other man, Peregrinus (1269) excepted. He repeated for himself the numerous and ingenious experiments of the medieval philosopher, and added much of his own which he discovered during the long period of a life devoted to the diligent exploration of this domain in the world of natural knowledge. The ancients spoke of the lodestone as the Magnesian stone, from its being found in abundance in the vicinity of Magnesia, a city of Asia Minor. In his Latin treatise of 254 (small) folio pages, Gilbert uses the adjective form of the term, but never the noun "Magnetismus" itself. Our English term _magnetism_ appears for the first time on page 2 of Archdeacon Barlowe's "Magneticall Advertisements," published in 1616; while the surprising compound, "electro-magnetismos," is the title of a chapter in Father Kircher's "Magnes, sive de Arte Magnetica," printed in the year 1641.