emselves to botany; Grew discovered the sexes of plants; Brown the
quinary arrangement of flowers. Geology began to break loose from the
trammels of theology, and Burnet's Sacred theory of the Earth could not
maintain its ground against more critical investigations. The Arabian
doctrine of the movement of the crust of the earth began to find
supporters. Lister ascertained the continuity of strata over great
distances; Woodward improved mineralogy; the great mathematician,
Leibnitz, the rival of Newton, propounded the doctrine of the gradual
cooling of the globe, the descent of its strata by fracture, the deposit
of sedimentary rocks, and their induration. Among physicians, Willis
devoted himself to the study of the brain, traced the course of the
nerves and classified them, and introduced the doctrine of the
localization of functions in the brain. Malpighi and Lewenhoeck applied
the microscope as an aid to anatomy; the latter discovered spermatozoa.
Graaf studied the function of the generative organs; Borelli attempted
the application of mathematics to muscular movement; Duverney wrote on
the sense of hearing, Mayow on respiration; Ruysch perfected the art of
injection, and improved minute anatomy.

But it is in vain to go on. The remainder of these pages would be
consumed in an attempt to record the names of the cultivators of
science, every year increasing in number, and to do justice to their
works. From the darkness that had for so many ages enveloped it, the
human mind at last emerged into light. The intellectual motes were
dancing in the sunbeam, and making it visible in every direction.

[Sidenote: Institution of scientific societies.] Despairing thus to do
justice to individual philosophers and individual discoveries, there is,
however, one most important event to which I must prominently allude. It
is the foundation of learned societies. Imitating the examples of the
Academia Secretorum Naturae, instituted at Naples, 1560, by Baptista
Porta, and of the Lyncean Academy, founded 1603 by Prince Frederic Cesi
at Rome for the promotion of natural philosophy, the Accademia del
Cimento was established at Florence, 1637; the Royal Society of London,
1645; and the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, 1666.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Review of anthropocentric philosophy.] Arrived at the close
of the description of this first great victory of scientific truth over
authority and tradition, it i