their relation to the Progress of Science. 177
definite establishment marks the opening of a great age of
scientific discovery in England. Almost every year of the
half-century which followed saw some step made to a wider
and truer knowledge." Flamsteed, Halley, Sydenham, Wood-
ward, Grew, and, above all, Newton, are names which adorn
the history of Science at this period. In Astronomy, in
Medicine, and in Physiology as well as in Descriptive Botany
and Zoology, mere empirical enumeration was rapidly giving
place to the conception of Law. In the words of a recent and
eloquent writer, "Natural Law is the last and most magnifi-
cent discovery of science.....In the earlier centuries,
before the birth of science, Phenomena were studied alone.
The world then was a chaos, a collection of single, isolated,
and independent facts. Deeper thinkers saw, indeed, that
relations must subsist between the facts, but the Reign of
Law was never more . . . . than a far-off vision. Their
philosophies heroically sought to marshal the discrete ma-
terials of the universe into thinkable form, but . . . . with
Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler the first regular lines of the
universe began to be discerned. When Nature yielded to
Newton her great secret, Gravitation was felt to be not
greater as a fact in itself than as a revelation that Law
was fact. And therefore the search for individual Phenomena
gave way before the larger study of their relations. The
pursuit of Law became the passion of science. What that
discovery of Law has done for Nature, it is impossible to
estimate. As a mere spectacle the universe to-day discloses
a beauty so transcendent that he who disciplines himself by
scientific work finds it an overwhelming reward simply to
behold it. In these Laws one stands face to face with truth,
solid and unchangeable. Bach single law is an instrument
of scientific research, simple in its adjustments, universal in
its applications, infallible in its results."
Dryden the poet-laureate, who became a Fellow of the
Royal Society in November, 1662, could only faintly have
appreciated this when he wrote his apostrophe to the
Society,—