Page:Memoirs of John Abernethy, F. R. S., with a view of his lectures, writings, and character (IA 39002086429751.med.yale.edu).pdf/30

4 GALILEO. BACON. KEPLER. and singularly truthful im spirit, Kepler exemplified two things very distinet from each other, but both equally instructive, both alike suggestive of the link he represented in the ebain of progress. In the laws he discovered, he showed the harvest seldom withheld from the camest search for truth, whilst in the limit preseribed to his diseoveries, he exemplified the vast additional labour, and the eomparative short-coming of the greatest minds when pro- eeeding too muelt on hypothesis. Now it is interesting to remember that this was eoineident with the dawning of that glorious light, the Inductive philosophy of Bacon, and shortly sueeecded by the splendid generalization of Newton.

In like manner, if we think of the discoveries of Sir Humphrey Davy—their nature and rédations to physiology as well as ehemistry, we sec how mueh there might have been that was preparatory, and to a mind like Davy’s, Suggestive, in the investigations of preeeding and contemporancous philosophers. Priestley had discovered oxygen gas, Galyani and Volta had �