Page:Dean Aldrich A Commemoration Speech.djvu/24

 flag of a cause otherwise lost and hopeless. He may not have altogether seen this—he had his own view of logic, and by that he judged both Bacon and Descartes. He tells us in the preface plainly that he found in Aristotle a perfection of logical thought, in the Scholastics a thoroughness of logical subtlety, for which he looked in vain elsewhere. Gassendi numbers among logicians, he says, 'Verulamium et Cartesium,' but the latter, observes Aldrich, labours at a philosophy which it would be an insult to call logical; the former has nothing in common with the Organon of Aristotle but the name. 'Mittamus igitur hos duos quibus nulla nobiscum res est.'

He holds in all this even his old character—in his gentleness meet and gather opposite forces without a shock. For in the very same decade in which he laid up in store the bones of the ancient philosophy, he was taking active part in the development of the new. In 1683 he is among the early founders of an Elaboratory Meeting with discourses on Chemistry—much noised abroad; over which presided Dr. Wilkins of Wadham, 'the greatest Curioso of his time,' says Antony à Wood. This was one of the seeds of the Royal Society.

So much for the Logician—let us transform our learned Doctor into an Artist. He has left us an elaborate work on the Elements of Architecture, in the preface of which, by Philip Smith, of New College, we read that 'the warm suns of Italy, the domesticity with congenial spirits he contracted there, exalted his inbred taste, and rendered it excursive through the whole field of arts. There he became impassioned for Architecture and Music.' He had travelled then, and had seen the great works of the Renaissance under their own bright lights