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Rh man and predecessor Budæus. But, of all the writers of the sixteenth century, Ludovicus Vives seems to have had the liveliest and the most assured foresight of the new career on which the human mind was about to enter. The following passage from one of his works would have done no discredit to the Novum Organon: “The similitude which many have fancied between the superiority of the moderns to the ancients, and the elevation of a dwarf on the back of a giant, is altogether false and puerile. Neither were they giants, nor are we dwarfs, but all of us men of the same standard,—and we the taller of the two, by adding their height to our own: Provided always, that we do not yield to them in study, attention, vigilance, and love of truth; for, if these qualities be wanting, so far from mounting on the giant’s shoulders, we throw away the advantages of our own just stature, by remaining prostrate on the ground.”

I pass over, without any particular notice, the names of some French logicians who flourished about this period, because, however celebrated among their contemporaries, they do not seem to form essential links in the History of Science. The bold and persevering spirit with which Ramus disputed, in the university of Paris, the authority of Aristotle, and the persecutions he incurred by this philosophical heresy, entitle him to an honourable distinction from the rest of his brethren. He was certainly a man of uncommon acuteness as well as eloquence, and placed in a very strong light some of the most vulnerable parts of the Aristotelian logic; without, however, exhibiting any marks of that deep sagacity which afterwards enabled Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, to strike at the very roots of the system. His copious and not inelegant style as a writer, recommended his innovations to those who were disgusted with the barbarism of the schools; while his avowed partiality for the reformed