s and Aristarchus
anticipated Copernicus by sixteen centuries. No man has surpassed the
sculptures of Rhodes, or the paintings of the sixteenth century. The
cathedral of Cologne is the offspring of forgotten brains. Such men as
Anselm were educated on the Trivium and Quadrivium. Five hundred years
ago Merton College could show such men as Geoffrey Chaucer, William of
Occam, and John Wickliffe. If the history of science can produce four
brighter contemporary names than Napier, Kepler, Descartes, and
Galileo, let them be forthcoming. But when, still earlier by a
century and a half, we behold a man who was not only architect,
engineer, and sculptor, and in painting the rival of Angelo, but who,
as Hallam proves, 'anticipated in the compass of a few pages the
discoveries which made Galileo, Kepler, Maestlin, Maurolycus, and
Castelli immortal,' it may well 'strike us,' he suggests 'with
something like the awe of supernatural knowledge;' and in the presence
of Leonardo da Vinci the modern scientist of highest rank may stand
with uncovered head.

"If wisdom was not born with us, neither will it die with us. There
will be something left to know. Our facts will be tested, our theories
probed, and our assertions exploded by better minds than ours. If it
be true, as Bacon says, '_prudens interrogatio dimidium scientiae_,' it
is also true, '_imprudens assertio excidium scientiae_.' We are in
these days treated to 'demonstrations' which scarcely rise to the
level of presumptions, but, rather, of presumption. There is an
accumulation of popular dogmatism that is very likely doomed within a
century to be swept into the same oblivion with the 'Christian
Astrology,' of William Lilly and the 'Ars Magna' of Raymond Lully--a
mass of rubbish that is waiting for another Caliph Omar and the
bath-fires of Alexandria.

"It will not answer to mistake the despotism of hypothesis for the
reign of law, nor physical law for the great 'I AM.' True thinkers
must respect other thinkers and God. They cannot ignore the primal
utterances of consciousness, the laws of logic, nor the truths of
history. Foregone conclusions are not to bar out the deepest facts of
human nature, nor the most stupendous events in the story of the race.
Hume may not rule out the settled laws of evidence the moment they
touch the borders of religion; nor may Strauss, by the simple
assertion that miracles are impossible, manacle the arm of God. Comte
may not put his extinguishe