never to fall down again, but turn like that of Evander, into meteors; or, like the cannon ball, into stars.''155 Paracelsus led the "stink-pot flingers", Harvey the dragoons, Wilkins the "enginers". The victory went in this case to the ancients. "Homer slew Wesley, and then seized Perrault and hurled him at Fonton

66

elle, killing both."'156 'Aristotle let fly an arrow at Bacon, and missing him, pierced the eye of Descartes.''157 The whole battle, however, closed in a draw, but the advantage had all been on the side of Temple and the Ancients.

This heroic burlesque shows what the layman might be expected to know of the activities in science. Swift, in his early years, had expressed a great admiration for scientific research. It would seem that this interest might have led him to considerable knowledge of the new experiments. In these two satires, however, where he is a special pleader, only the most obvious things, the most sensational things are mentioned. He made the most of the satiric possibilities in the sensational claims of the new philosophers. But of the real workers, of Newton, Boyle, Hooke, Halley, Hans Sloane, Ray, Willughby,—all of them already famous Englishmen he makes no mention. Of the great accomplishments,— Boyle's law, Newton's Gravitation theory, the Copernican system, the revelations of the microscope and the telescope-he is either ignorant, or wilfully omits them.

The effect of these satires was to sweep aside this vain controversy. It was not a victory for Temple and the Ancients, nor did it leave the field wholly in possession of the Moderns. This result was just what Swift must have desired: He had defended Temple and had shown the Moderns the unreasonable lengths to which their claims had gone.

As this period saw the defeat of witchcraft, the sweeping away of untenable physical hypotheses, and the banishment of a foolish reverence for antiquity, so it beheld the downfall of "judicial astrology". This pseudo-science, which clung like a parasite to the new philosophy, had long since lost prestige among the learned,158 165 The Battle of the Books (Everyman's Edition, p. 155-6).

150 Ibid. p. 160.

157 Ibid.

158 There were men, of course, who had not given it up entirely; for example John Dryden, who is known to have "inclined to a belief in it". For the famous astrologers of the day see supra, Chap. I, p. 20, note.

but continued to hold sway over the ignorant by means of almanacmakers. It was Dean Swift, the man who defended Temple and the Ancients, that gave the death blow to this false doctrine in the so-called Partridge Papers. This famous practical joke upon Partridge is too well known to need extended discussion. It may be briefly shown, however, that it was a part of the struggle for the supremacy of reason and commonsense.

Swift defined his position on the question of astrology in his Predictions for the Year 1708. "I must add one word more : I know it has been the opinion of several learned persons, who think well enough of the true art of astrology, that the stars do incline, and not force the actions or wills of men;159 and therefore, however, I may proceed by right rules, yet I cannot in prudence so confidently assume the events will follow exactly as I predict them".16 He then predicted among other things the death of Partridge "on the 29th of March next, at about eleven at night, of a raging fever" 161 This trick of Swift's caught the humor of London; the wits were curious to see Partridge hoisted with his own petard. In due time Partridge's death was announced in a detailed account of his last moments. The account found some credence in spite of Partridge's vigorous protest that "the reports were exaggerated".

Almanac-making did not cease with this incident, but judicial astrology became a laughing-stock for the town. Commonsense with satiric lance had driven it from the field, so that it was henceforth "pensioned in dotage" among all those who pretended to learning. By this means another stronghold was taken by reason.

This survey of the conflict between the old and the new scientific ideas has been made by an examination of the salient examples. The discussion has constantly been centred upon the meeting of imagination and science. The conflict was far more permeating than that reaching into religion, moral and human philosophy, and politics. Nor did the conflict cease with the early years of the

159 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. I; "They incline but do not compel and so gently incline that a wise man may resist them. They rule but God rules them." Cf. Browne's Vulgar Errors, vol. II, p. 200; "There is in wise men a power above the Stars."

160 Swift's Works, vol. VIII, p. 402-3.

161 Ibid. vol. VIII, p. 443-4.

eighteenth century, for new ideas, new physical conceptions must fight their way today. But this transition period has offered such phenomena as can be duplicated in more modern times only by the mid-years of the nineteenth century, when evolution first became a revolutionizing factor in human thought. The new ideas were making their way slowly toward an adequate literary expression, and toward a place of dignity in the minds of thinking men. With the last years of the seventeenth century there came a scientist whose genius was so superior, whose character was so irreproachable that all he did and all he said was looked upon with interest and attention. Men had only words of praise for Sir Isaac Newton.

Our study has revealed these facts: (1) The poets of the transition period, who were brought into close contact with the new scientific ideas, such as Cowley, Waller, Denham, and Sprat, were not able to throw off the yoke of conventional, outworn imagery of a discarded science. The influence of the new material upon them was surprisingly slight, both in inspiration and imagery. However much these men might support the new philosophy as thinkers, as poets they were uniformly of an earlier period of science. (2) In Milton was found the great scientific evasion, because he stood in doubt at the parting of the ways, distrusting the old and fearing the new. He was, therefore, forced to equivocate. Thus far, at least, he was a man of his period, and was fettered by the transition. (3) Here, too, was the final defeat of the longaccepted belief in witchcraft and sorcery among learned men; its last defense finding expression in the work of Joseph Glanvil, a man of unusually clear vision and sane judgment, and imbued with the new scientific spirit, but limited by inherited belief and superstition. (4) Likewise, there was the destruction of the power of ancient classical authority and a triumph for a "free and unpossest Reason". (5) Old false hypotheses, patched up with new facts but dimly understood, were fully refuted, as in the case of Thomas Burnet. It was in this destructive process that the "wary and circumspect disposition" of the scientists made itself felt most powerfully. (6) The pseudo-science of astrology was laughed to scorn by Swift, as Ben Jonson had earlier served alchemy. It was this new attitude of reason and commonsense

entering into all the avenues of life that made men ready to disIcard the old idols and the "ancient faith".

Thus far, then, the men of imagination who had the best opportunity to know the new scientific ideas, with the exception of Glanvil and Burnet, show a general lack of appreciation of them and their literary possibilities. Milton, indeed, had found an infinite universe without abandoning the old science; to him the world had become a speck in space and man "an atom of an atomworld". But other poets had followed Hobbes's dictum,-"the subject of poetry is not natural science but the manners of men'. 162 The day had not yet fully dawned, "when, through the roof of the little theatre on which the drama of man's history had been enacted, men began to see the eternal stars shining in silent contempt upon their petty imaginings",163 or when "they began to suspect that the whole scenery was but a fabric woven by their own imaginations'' 164 And, finally, imagination had not yet overtaken reason, nor had the "framework of formulae gathered round it the necessary associations" for a direct expression of emotion, without the aid of an outworn hypothesis.

162 Hobbes, Thomas, Letter to D'Avenant, 1650.

163 Stephens, Leslie, History of 18th Century Thought, vol. I, p. 82.

164 Ibid. vol. I, p. 15.

CHAPTER III

THE NEW SCIENCE AND COMEDY

The new science did not escape the writers of comedy, who were constantly looking for some fresh, unexplored interest. It was, in truth, these "Wits and Railleurs" whom the virtuosi feared most of all, because their ridicule was more difficult to combat than the serious, but definite, opposition of others. The playwriters, moreover, were not careful, nor, indeed, were they desirous, to discriminate between true science and pseudo-science. Satirists do not look for the strong points in a new movement, but for its weaknesses. Almost inevitably, therefore, the new philosophy would be held responsible for all the absurd things done in its name; experimental science must support the follies and chicanery of pseudo-science and superstition. In this occult science there was a legitimate field for satire, because the whole basis was false and the professors of it were charlatans and imposters. The comic spirit had, in fact, entered the field of occult science long before the organization of the Royal Society. In 1610, Ben Jonson had held up Subtle, the alchemist, to public ridicule, and had made men ashamed to profess this "humour" seriously. But the new philosophy, also, was opposed to such false pretentions; and, while alchemy continued,1 with declining power, through the seventeenth century, the new demand of experimental science for natural causes tended to destroy the foolish hopes of turning the baser metals into gold and to discourage the absurd search for the philosopher's stone.2 Subtle, in The Alchemist, could not, therefore, be classed among the new Baconian philosophers, and Ben Jonson's satire was not pertinent in the Restoration period.3

With astonishing pertinacity the belief in witchcraft and sorcery held a place in the minds of men and found defenders even among the new philosophers. Bacon had early attempted to

give scientific explanation of it; Boyle confessed his faith in it;"

1 Of. Ashmole's Theatrum Chymicum; also, chap. I, p. 21.

Boyle, Sir Robert, Sceptical Chymist.

3 The Alchemist was revived in 1663, Pepys saw it in 1664, August 3d.

appeared as The Empiric in 1672.

It re

Traill, H. D., Social England, vol. IV, p. 87.

Boyle, Usefullness of Experimental Philosophy, p. 238.