Page:Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law.djvu/34

 by a pervading though temperate spirit of religion.” These are no ordinary encomia, nor do they come from the pen of an ordinary critic.

With regard to the method of Grotius, it is essentially inductive. The proof of many of his positions was to be found in the custom of mankind; and that custom was to be established by a large induction. “Truth,” in his opinion, to apply to our subject the striking language of Milton, in his Discourse on unlicensed Printing “came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look upon; but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptain Typhon, with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time, ever since, the sad friends of truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that was made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them.”

The above passage, which embodies the wild and vigorous imagery of the Commonwealth, was applied by Milton to illustrate the labours of the disciples of Faust and Gutenberg; but it is likewise most appropriate to the labourers in the general field of inductive science. Those who gaze on the perfect form in which their work results, know little of the painful stages which have been undergone in fitting together the disjected limbs of truth, just as mariners, who guide their vessels through dangerous shoals by well-known beacons, think little of the labours of those who have first explored and buoyed the channel, and who have set up the landmarks.