Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/239

Rh excesses. There was an element which, likewise turned from the heated discussions of theology, but, more wisely, sought the serene companionship of Nature as the restful change.

"There arose at this time," says Dr. Whewell, "a group of philosophers, who began to knock at the door where truth was to be found, although it was left for Newton to force it open. These were the founders of the Royal Society."

But to Lord Bacon, who died but thirty-six years before the incorporation of the society, is due the first impulse in England to the proper study of nature. Indeed, some such an institution as the Royal Society, for the study of the sciences, was in his mind when he wrote his philosophical romance, the "New Atlantis." What he did not live to form, his disciples realized.

Dr. Wallis, in his diary of 1696-'97, says: "About the year 1645, while I lived in London (at a time when, by our civil wars, academical studies were much interrupted in both our universities), besides the conversation of diverse eminent divines, as to matters theological, I had the opportunity of being acquainted with diverse worthy persons, inquisitive into natural philosophy and other parts of human learning, and particularly of what had been called the New Philosophy or Experimental Philosophy. ... Our business (at these meetings, held at Gresham College) was (precluding matters of theology and statecraft) to discourse and consider of Philosophical Enquiries, and such as related thereto: as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, Chemicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, the valves of the veins, the venæ lactæe, the lymphatick vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape of Saturn, the spots in the sun, and its turning on its own axis, the inequalities and selenography of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the improvement of telescopes, and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities, and nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment in quicksilver, the descent of bodies and the degree of acceleration therein, and diverse other things of like nature."

These meetings were continued at Gresham College and at Oxford, whither many went with Charles I, as frequently as the exigencies of war permitted; but, with Charles II firmly seated on the throne, the fugitives returned to London, where, in 1660, the society was formally instituted, and application was made to the king to give it a corporate being and name by a royal charter.

Sir Robert Moray, the first president, brought in word from the court that "the king had been acquainted with the design of the meeting. And he did well approve of it, and would be ready