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thinker, whose mind is uncorrupted by the world, many great first truths, which are lost in the vague forms of proverbial commonplace, should start into an intense reality; and thus language, which has lost its sense to worldly wisdom, acquire a power beyond the conception of keen and shrewd deriders. Of this single-minded, earnest, and conscientious character was Mr Boyle, to whom the very title of the Supreme Being brought a sense of veneration, and a host of solemn and affecting truths, such as seldom in any way, and never very intensely, crossed the minds of those who exercised their wit upon his reflections. The author of Hudibras was one of these; he imitated Mr Boyle in "An occasional Reflection on Dr Charlton's feeling a Dog's Pulse, at Gresham College." Swift also wrote his "Pious Meditations on a Broomstick," in imitation of the same compositions.

The high reputation, both as a philosopher and a Christian, acquired by Mr Boyle, recommended him to the respect and favour of all that was high and honourable in the land. The provostship of Eton having become vacant, he was nominated by the king to that important station. This he declined, because he wanted no addition either to his rank or fortune. He had decided against taking holy orders, for a reason which we have always considered as having much weight: that the world, and still more the infidel portion of it, is more likely to be influenced by the more apparently disinterested Christianity of a layman, than by the professional zeal and testimony of a churchman. Mr Boyle had also a sense that his devotion to chemistry might be found inconsistent with the active duties of the college, as he would find it his duty to fulfil them.

He was, at the same period of his life, appealed to upon a controversy which then, and often since, has excited the attention of society. This was the question as to the supposed supernatural virtue of healing, which was supposed to reside in the person of a Mr Valentine Greatrakes. Both parties addressed their appeal to Mr Boyle, as the person of the age most fitted to give an authoritative opinion. We should enter here very fully into that curious subject, had we not to give a separate notice on it in the memoir of Mr Greatrakes, where we shall give it exclusive consideration. Suffice it here to say, that a letter was addressed to Mr Boyle, by a Mr Stubbe, in behalf of Greatrakes, and that he replied in another, which, deservedly, obtained great praise.

In 1667, when a severe attack was made upon the Royal Society, Mr Boyle took a prominent part in the defence. It was, in reality, the era of a great revolution in the intellectual world-when the contest between the darkness of the scholastic age and the light of the Newtonian day was at its maximum point of violence. The advocates of a master, who would have scornfully disclaimed them, supplied the want of reason in favour of the Aristotelian philosophy, by charging the new philosophy and its supporters with impiety. The charge was, indeed, unlucky; it appealed to prejudices, and placed truth itself in a false position. The sacred history, written in an early age of the world, and not designed for the chimerical and inconsistent purpose of teaching natural philosophy, used the language of mankind in its allusions to nature-the only medium by which it could continue in

telligible through so many states of civilization. But as men theorized on nature, and came to various notions on the structure of the mundane system, it is evident that they would compare the language of holy writ with the conclusions of science. Hence difficulties would arise. To deal with these, or to prevent them, the jargon of the schools was a convenient, but most mischievous resource. It was virtually the means of arriving at any desired inference by verbal dexterity. Thus adopting as sacred revelations, the indispensable language of the Bible, it preserved an erroneous system of physics, by excluding the consideration of phenomena. The mistake of the ancient writers on this head was two-fold; for, the scripture was not only understood to declare an accurate system of the world, but its language was so interpreted as to convert the prevalent philosophy of the age into the intent and meaning of the sacred text. Thus, unhappily, arose the self-perpetuation of error: it perverted scripture; and erected the perversion into sacred authority. When the reason of mankind became more free, another evil result arose: the fallacies which were thus wedded to the Bible, by old and venerated error, could not be easily divorced, and became a fertile ground for the sophistry of the deist. And yet, in a philosophic age, it seems strange that sophisms so obvious should have been ventured. It ought, indeed, to be observed that even the latest works on astronomy are liable to the very same misinterpretations; for, from the difficulty and complication of the subject, it is found necessary to adopt a fictitious convention, founded on appearances, as an indispensable necessity of language. And that fiction is the very same which the philosophers and divines of ages imagined to be a system maintained on the authority of scripture-which contained no system, and disclosed not one single fact in nature. For the purpose, it should, indeed, have contained some other books, bigger than itself, of pure and unmixed mathematics. Nor would it be very possible to fix a limit where God should cease to reveal, and reason begin its queries, cavils, and senseless mistakes and superstitions. The language of Laplace, of the vulgar of all ages, founded on the common principles of human language, is precisely that which the sacred penmen have used; because there never was, or will be, any other. The secret that the truth of God needs no veil of consecrated error-and that his word stands aloof and undefiled by the rashness of theories, or the fanaticism of schools-was as far from being understood as the Baconian philosophy. As a theory of metaphysics, the inductive method might be suffered to pass among other subtle speculations: speculation had, indeed, so little connexion with practice, that there was nothing very formidable in any effort of this nature-it was simply a great book to swell the mass of academic lucubration. But it was a different thing when a new race of inquirers arose, and, throwing aside the endless and inconclusive resources of division, distinction, syllogism, and definition, stretched beyond, and mistaken in their use, and began to weigh and measure, compare, compound, and analyze, and seek for the constitution of nature by a diligent and searching examination of nature itself. Such a new and daring course would not only assail the learned repose of universities, and deprive grave

doctors of much cheap-won wisdom, but it also gave a violent shock to that factious zeal with which systems are so much upheld. Hence it was that where reason failed, it was an easy, though most unfortunate, resource of controversy, to call in the aid of an appeal such as that we have described, and bring holy writ to the aid of the Aristotelians. The error has been propagated down to our times, checking science, and abusing scripture. The Royal Society was its first object. Mr Boyle was personally treated with the respect of his antagonists-a remarkable testimony to his reputation for piety and worth. A friend of his, who was a leading writer in the controversy, notices him in this honourable manner: that he "alone had done enough to oblige all mankind, and to erect an eternal monument to his memory; so that had he lived in the days when men godded their benefactors, he could not have missed one of the first places among their deified mortals; and that in his writings are to be found the greatest strength and the sweetest modesty, the noblest discoveries and the most generous self-denial, the profoundest insight into philosophy and nature, and the most devout and affectionate sense of God and religion."

In the following year he changed his residence from Oxford to London, where he took up his quarters with the lady Ranelagh his sister. The change facilitated his communication with the Royal Society, and with learned men. As was usual, he continued to produce and send forth essays on various branches of natural philosophy; chiefly, however, upon subjects connected with the properties of air and water. In 1670, he published a work containing a more detailed account of his philosophical speculations and discoveries. This work obtained very general notice, and we can have no hesitation in saying, that it gave a vast impulse to chemical inquiry.

In 1671, his health, ever very delicate, received a severe shock from a paralytic disease. He, nevertheless, recovered, it is said by the adoption of a strict regimen, with the help of medical treatment.

Among the very numerous tracts which he every year published, there was, in 1674, a paper read in the Royal Society on "quicksilver growing hot with gold," which drew a letter from Newton to caution him against any premature disclosure on a fact apparently so favourable to Alchymy. Mr Boyle seems not altogether to have abandoned some of these notions more properly appertaining to that visionary science: this was, however, both natural, and even philosophically just, in the commencement of a science of which it was the origin. Alchymy had already produced a rich accumulation of facts, and it was impossible to decide where the true line was to be found between reality and conjecture. Though it is the spirit of inductive science to question nature, by means of experiment and observation, it is plain that there must be some previous process of conjecture to give the direction to inquiry. The true principle of conjecture is, that it should be directed by knowledge; as, out of ascertained facts, various probabilities arise to exercise the invention and sagacity of the inquirer. Laws of nature rise slowly to observation, and with them the law of observation and inference grows both stricter and surer. To venture to assume these limiting rules prematurely, would have been a fatal error; and even still it would be hard to fix the bounds of the unknown, and

therefore mysterious processes of nature. We cannot affirm that mankind may not, in the course of half a century, have ascertained not only numerous new and unknown properties, such as to give an entirely new aspect to the laws supposed to be those of nature, but have discovered results which must be concluded to indicate further elementary laws as yet unknown. But there is a sound rule, of which we shall have much occasion to speak further—it is this; that there is a certain perceptible analogy in the operations of nature, which it is chimerical and visionary to depart from, but within which the utmost latitude of conjecture may and even must be allowed, even to the apparent verge of extravagance. A known operation, working according to an ascertained law, may, according to this principle, be carried in experiment to any extreme length against which human ignorance has set up its canon of prejudice; because, in fact, there is nothing can be pronounced impossible, unless for some specific reason on the most rigidly ascertained grounds. On the other hand, to violate this analogy would be to take improbability for the guide of science; to neglect it would be to take chance, and drift upon the ocean of nonexistence. The reader of these remarks cannot fail to keep in view, that their application is not to the grounds of strict inference, which, to have any value, must be derived by the strictest reasoning from the most rigid facts; but to the grounds of probable conjecture which is the guide of trial. In Mr Boyle's day, the founders of modern science might justly entertain a salutary terror against the visions of the empirical philosophy, founded as they were upon a mixture of superstition, lawless fancies, traditionary dogmas, crude hypotheses, and premature generalizations. And as human reason is ever oscillating to extremes, the new impulse would naturally lead the followers of Galileo and Bacon to take a narrow basis for their views in science; and in departing from the visionary fields of the old hermetic science, leave behind some solid and valuable truths. Looking on the subject with these reflections, we are rather led to admire the tempered and considerate spirit of Mr Boyle, than to qualify his character by the admission of an enthusiasm for the occult and mystical, which seems to have tinged his zeal and led him further into speculative inquiry than he would have gone in the next generation. With or without such a qualification-the extent, variety, and soundness, of his investigation, placed natural philosophy on a firm and broad foundation, and gave the great impulse, from which numerous inquiries of far less genius have since obtained higher celebrity.

The very titles of some of his works convey the sound election with which he observed the errors and obstructions of human inquiry, which impeded, and even still, in some measure, continue to impede natural science. Of this nature may be specified his "Free Inquiry into the vulgar notion of Nature;" and his "Disquisition into the final causes of natural things, and with what caution a naturalist should admit them."

It appears that several of his writings were lost by various causes, among which there occurs one not now very easy to apprehend. It is stated by himself, that he had lost numerous manuscripts by the surreptitious depredation of visitors. In 1686, he published some state

ments of the various obstacles he had met with, and the difficulties which he had encountered in the publication of his writings. This is now chiefly important as one of the numerous indications of a state of literature altogether different from that of more recent times. It is now not very far from the truth to say, that the universal sense of literary men is one which would suggest an apology of an opposite purport from that of Mr Boyle's; and indeed, there are few prefaces which do not contain some implication of the kind. A modern writer may perhaps feel, with some reason, that he has to account for the public appearance, in which the public is but little or not at all interested: but Mr Boyle felt the solemn duty of one to whom it was committed to enlighten and instruct an age of great comparative ignorance. His apology indicates the entire absence of those sentiments of egotism and arrogance, of which such an apology might now be regarded as the language. But it is to be admitted that, in this respect, the claim of the scientific inquirer yet stands upon a peculiar ground; the successful prosecutor of discoveries must always possess a claim upon the mind of his age: he owes something to the world, and the world something to him—he stands apart, because he is in advance of his age—his appeal is the assertion of a duty, not the boast of a merit, or a demand for the admiration of the world. Such claims as Mr Boyle had to the respect and gratitude of his age, were then accompanied by much anxiety, and the sense of a jealous and earnest competition. The whole structure of science was to be built—and as the ignorance of nature had, till then, been occasioned by an entire perversion in the method and direction of the human mind—there was a wide waste of obvious phenomena which lay upon the surface, ready to offer themselves to the first glances of rightly directed inquiry. It was a consequence that, among the philosophers of the age, there was a jealous competition. In this was, then, first displayed that unscrupulous disregard to truth and justice, which has in so many instances disgraced foreign philosophers, who have shown an unpardonable readiness to appropriate the inventions and discoveries of English science. The reader will recollect the great controversy concerning the fluxionary or differential calculus, of which this was the period. Similarly, Mr Boyle had to complain of numerous instances in which he was the object of similar frauds. Many copied his writings without any citation of authority, or stated his experiments in their books as if they had made them themselves.

A life of indefatigable research and study could not fail to affect the extremely delicate constitution of Mr Boyle. Great temperance, and continual caution which is mostly enforced by so tender a frame, had perhaps made the most of his strength. But he at last felt it due to science, and essential to his ease and health, to restrict his labours, and to avoid all superfluous engagements. He seems to have been deeply impressed with that sense of the value of time which belongs to those who have great and permanent objects of pursuit, and an earnest desire to accomplish the truer and worthier ends of existence. The broad ocean of discovery, too vast for even the contemplation of the highest human reason, or for the mind of ages, lay yet untried in all its magnificent expanse before his mind's eye: he could anticipate

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