_This_ then is the association of which Raleigh was the chief; _this_ was the state, within the state which he was founding. ('See the reach of this man,' says Lord Coke on his Trial.) It is true that the honour is also ascribed to Montaigne; but we shall find, as we proceed with this inquiry, that _all_ the works and inventions of this new English school, of which Raleigh was chief, all its new and vast designs for man's relief, are also claimed by that same aspiring gentleman, as they were, too, by another of these Egotists, who came out in his own name with this identical project. It was only within the walls of a school that the great principle of the new philosophy of fact and practice, which had to pretend to be profoundly absorbed in chemical experiments, or in physical observations, and inductions of some kind--though not without an occasional hint of a broader intention,--it was only in _esoteric_ language that the great principles of this philosophy could begin to be set forth _in their true comprehension_. The very trunk of it, the primal science itself, must needs be mystified and hidden in a shower of metaphysical dust, and piled and heaped about with the old dead branches of scholasticism, lest men should see for themselves _how_ broad and comprehensive _must_ be the ultimate sweep of its determinations; lest men should see for themselves, how a science which begins in fact, and returns to it again, which begins in observation and experiment, and returns in scientific practice, in scientific arts, in scientific re-formation, might have to do, ere all was done, with facts not then inviting scientific investigation--with arts not then inviting scientific reform. In consequence of a sudden and common advancement of intelligence among the leading men of that age, which left the standard of intelligence represented in more than one of its existing institutions, very considerably in the rear of its advancement, there followed, as the inevitable result, a tendency to the formation of some medium of expression,--whether that tendency was artistically developed or not, in which the new and nobler thoughts of men, in which their dearest beliefs, could find some vent and limited interchange and circulation, without startling the _ear_. Eventually there came to be a number of men in England at this time,--and who shall say that there were none on the continent of this school,--occupying prominent positions in the state, heading, it might be, or ranged in opposite factions at Court, who could speak and write in such a manner, upon topics of common interest, as to make themselves entirely intelligible to each other, without exposing themselves to any of the risks, which confidential communications under such circumstances involved.