Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/37

 afterwards Newton discarding the then theory of the universe, set to work to find out for himself the principles of motion and forces, and if we see also in this Baconian time other men illustrious in literature, in statesmanship, in commerce, or adventure, we nced no longer inquire which of these great men was the forerunner of the other, but ask ourselves what was the common spirit which actuated them all. The answer is that the whole country at the Elizabethan era was emancipating itself from an intellectual and spiritual thraldom. Aristotle and Plato had held despotic sway, and kept men's minds as it were in their iron grasp for centuries. Bacon had the courage and power to throw off the yoke, enough to constitute him a hero amongst the leaders of thought, and having felt his liberty, resolved thenceforth to be intellectually free.

It was a like spirit too which produced at the same period our Shakespeare, and men like Raleigh, Frobisher and Drake, who in a true and literal sense unchecked and uninfluenced by the geography of ages, fearlessly put to sea, and rested not until they had made an unknown world their own. The history of the time exhibits the