[Footnote 112: "Talia sunt qualia possunt esse ea quæ ab intellectu sibi permisso, nec ab experimentis continenter et gradatim sublevato, profecta videntur."] [Footnote 113: Thom. Campanella _de Libris propriis_, as quoted in Tenneman, ix. 291.] [Footnote 114: _Economisti Italiani_, t. i. p. xxxiii.] [Footnote 115: Tenneman, ix. 305.] [Footnote 116: _Hist. Ind. Sc._ b. xvi. c. iii. sect. 2.] [Footnote 117: _Ibid._ b. xvii. c. ii. sect. 1.] [Footnote 118: _Quæst. Peripat._ i. 1.] [Footnote 119: Tenneman, ix. 108.] [Footnote 120: _Hist. Ind. Sc._ b. v. c. iii. sect. 2.] [Footnote 121: Tenneman, ix. 420. "Quæcunque ab Aristotele dicta essent commenticia esse." Freigius, _Vita Petri Rami_, p. 10.] [Footnote 122: Rami, _Animadv. Aristot._ i. iv.] [Footnote 123: See _Hist. Ind. Sc._ b. iv. c. iv. sect. 4.] [Footnote 124: Tenneman, ix. 230.] [Footnote 125: _Ibid._ 108.] [Footnote 126: Tenneman, ix. 246.] [Footnote 127: Melancthon, _De Anima_, p. 207, quoted in Tenneman, ix. 121.] CHAPTER XIV. THE PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 1. _Character of the Practical Reformers._--We now come to a class of speculators who had perhaps a greater share in bringing about the change from stationary to progressive knowledge, than those writers who so loudly announced the revolution. The mode in which the philosophers of whom we now speak produced their impressions on men's minds, was very different from the procedure of the theoretical reformers. What these talked of, they did; what these promised, they performed. While the theorists concerning knowledge proclaimed that great advances were to be made, the practical discoverers went steadily forwards. While one class spoke of a complete Reform of scientific Methods, the other, boasting little, and often thinking little of Method, proved the novelty of their instrument by obtaining new results. While the metaphysicians were exhorting men to consult experience and the senses, the physicists were examining nature by such means with unparalleled success. And while the former, even when they did for a moment refer to facts, soon rushed back into their own region of ideas, and tried at once to seize the widest generalizations, the latter, fastening their attention upon the phenomena, and trying to reduce them to laws, were carried forwards by steps measured and gradual, such as no conjectural view of scientific method had suggested; but leading to truths as profound and comprehensive as any which conjecture had dared to anticipate. The theoretical reformers were bold, self-confident, hasty, contemptuous of antiquity, ambitious of ruling all future speculations, as they whom they sought to depose had ruled the past. The practical reformers were cautious, modest, slow, despising no knowledge, whether borrowed from tradition or observation, confident in the ultimate triumph of science, but impressed with the conviction that each single person could contribute a little only to its progress. Yet