3. 1R. p. forrest (Edinburgh 5C LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO \ m DIVERSITY U8RMT . CALIFORNIA SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA. SCEPSIS SCI ENTI FI C A: OR, CONFEST IGNORANCE, THE WAY TO SCIENCE; IN AN ESSAY OF THE VANITY OF DOGMATIZING, AND CONFIDENT OPINION. By JOSEPH GLANV1LL, M.A. EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, BY JOHN OWEN. LONDON KEG AN PAUL, TRENCH & CO MDCCCLXXXV GLANVILL. AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND WORKS OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. OF the great and many-sided mental throes through which England passed in the I7th century, especially of the re- action, political, religious, and literary, which is marked by the Restoration, it would be hard to find a better exponent than the author of the Scepsis Scientifica. Glanvill's was one of those eclectic, sym- pathetic intellects, which, like a glass with many facets, reveals in brilliant prismatic hues not one or two, but all the great Thought-forces which surround it ; while in response to this varied intellectual sensitive- ness, doubtless serving also as a stimulus, was his environment ; for his lot chanced to be cast in one of the most stirring epochs of English History. The chief events in Glanvill's uneventful life may be briefly summarized. He was viii THE LIFE AND WORKS born at Plymouth, in 1636. Of his earlier life and education we have no trustworthy record beyond a few casual hints scattered throughout his writings.* He seems to have been brought up, if not as an extreme sectary, at least in some school of Puritanism which allowed small scope for independent judg- ment. Thus he tells us, in his "Plus Ultra" (p. 142): "In my first education I was continually instructed into a religious and fast adherence to everything I was taught, and a dread of disputing in the least article," a mode of education which he was wont in after life vehemently to de- nounce. He entered the University of Oxford in 1652, and took his degree three years after. In the dearth of more direct information, his love of culture and mental independence may fairly be inferred from his associates. Thus he was a personal friend of, and for some few years chaplain to, the well-known Francis Rous, Provost of Eton, who, notwithstanding his Puritan proclivities, * The chief authorities for Glanvill's life all of them unsatisfactory are Prince's Worthies of Devon, p. 431, the Bio- graphia Brittanica, ad. voc., and Horneck's Preface to Glanvill's Remains. OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. ix and the facility with which he accommodated himself to Cromwell's designs, was a man of considerable culture as well as liberality. Another of his theological friends was Baxter,* while his circle of literary and scientific acquaintance comprised names as famous as Boyle and Meric Casaubon. Glanvill used to lament in after life that his friends had not sent him to Cambridge, so that he might have reached the " New Philosophy" of Descartes already domi- ciled in that University by a shorter route than that which his circumstances compelled him to follow. Indeed, the Aristotelianism which was still the ruling philosophy of Oxford seems to have sat as heavily on Glanvill's soul as did the Puritan dogmatism which was its prevailing type of religion. From these twin Incubi he resolved to free himself at the earliest possible moment. His liberation from Aristotle is marked by the publication of his first work, in 1661, while the Restoration may be taken as the date of his emancipation from the religious thraldom of Puritanism. No sooner had that * Comp. Reliquice Baxteriance, Pt. ii. p. 378. b * THE LIFE AND WORKS event taken place, than Glanvill renounced the small modicum of Nonconformity he had hitherto professed, and took orders in the Church of England. Of this conduct Anthony Wood characteristically remarks, that at the Restoration "Glanvill turned about and became a Latitudinarian," but the altered position thus sneeringly alluded to was in GlanvilPs case, as in that of others, not so much a change of front as a natural and inevitable movement in advance. His own judgment of such a transformation by development is indicated in his account of Bishop Rust, who similarly took advantage of the Restoration to " turn about " from Puritanism to the English Church. " He was one of the first," says Glanvill, " that overcame the prejudices of the education of he late unhappy times in that University (Cambridge), and was very instrumental to enlarge others. He had too great a soul for the trifles of that age, and saw early the nakedness of phrases and phancies. He outgrew the pretended orthodoxy of those days, and addicted himself to the Primitive Learning and Theology, in which he even then became a great master." Glanvill soon became a marked man among the clergy of OFJOSEPH GLANVILL. an his time, and his preferment was rapid. First instituted to a small rectory in Essex, he was promoted shortly after to the vicarage of Frome, in Somerset. About the same date (1664) he was made a fellow of the newly-founded Royal Society an honour which he seems to have attained by his attack on Aristotle and Scholasticism, and his enlightened advocacy of the new methods of Descartes and Bacon. In 1666 he be- came Rector of the Abbey Church in Bath, and resided in that city until his death. In 1672 he exchanged the vicarage of Frome for the rectory of Street in Somerset, and about the same time was appointed one of the chaplains in ordinary to Charles II. A few years later (1678) he was installed Prebendary of Worcester. He died of fever in 1680, and was buried in the north aisle of the Abbey Church in Bath, where an inscription may still be seen recording his virtues, and insisting especially on the fact that the twenty-four years of his brief maturity were spent " in studio et contem- platione verbi et operum Dei." Such are the chronological dry bones of Glanvill's life, and to these, so far as is known, nothing worthy of record can be 62 srii THE LIFE AND WORKS added. The real extent of his fame and influence must not, however, be meted by the brevity and comparative unimportance of the chief events of his life the meagreness of his biographical data being largely compensated by the fulness of his literary remains. By his written works, now con- signed to, in most instances, a most unde- served oblivion, Glanvill exercised no incon- siderable sway on English thought during the latter half of the i7th century. To the student of that period they still attest his high mental qualities, his keen intellectual perception, his variedly-sensitive imagina- tion, what Wood terms his "quick, warm, spruce and gay fancy," his genial, many- sided receptivity, his fearlessness in enounc- ing his opinions, his quaint, pithy, preg- nant and forcible style. Nor are they of less importance as reflecting the under currents of speculation then in activity among cultured Englishmen. Employing them for this latter purpose, and thereby illustrating the drift of the following treatise, we may take Glanvill as a fair exponent of the following thought-movements of his time. Thus he exemplifies : i. The Reaction against Philosophical and OF JOSEPH G I. AN V ILL. xiii Religious Dogmatism, which, though not caused, was materially aided by the collapse of the Puritan regime. 2. The study and advocacy of the foreign humanism imported into English literature in the i6th century, but the development of which had been arrested by the rapid growth of Puritanism and by the political troubles of the reigns of James I. and Charles I. 3. The liberalizing tendencies of English Theology, which centred around the school of Divines known as the Cambridge Pla- tonists. 4. The early growth of experimental and natural Science, denoted by Bacon's works and the founding of the Royal Society. 5. The imperfect conception of the true methods of scientific enquiry, which allowed the grossest superstitions a place side by side with the most enlightened researches of Science. i. Glanvill was one of the first thinkers of the Restoration epoch to place on a philoso- phical basis the many-sided reaction which forms its chiefest characteristic. Just as Milton recognised an intensified ecclesias- ticism in certain forms of Puritanism, Presbyter being but Priest "writ large," xiv THE LIFE AND WORKS so Glanvill and others had no difficulty in detecting beneath its sour austerity and theoretical self-abasement a very real sub- stratum of Omniscience. This was none the less specious in itself or less mischievous in operation for being ostensibly founded on religious sanctions, and assuming the place and function of a divine Revelation. From this standpoint of superior and superhuman knowledge, Puritanism opposed itself to liberal culture of all kinds. Its leaders, excepting a very few far-seeing thinkers, lumped all secular learning under the op- probrious title of " carnal knowledge." Their omniscience rendered all ordinary science superfluous, and the supposedly divine origin of their own enlightenment imparted to every other culture a kind of sinful character. Under these circumstances it was clearly necessary for liberal thinkers like Glanvill to enter the court of human judgment with the counter-plea of Ignorance. The attempt was in its essence precisely that which Sokrates set himself in ancient Greece, and which the leaders of the Renaissance undertook when they opposed the dogmatism of mediaeval Rome. In fact, Glanvill and his fellow-thinkers were the OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xv apostles of the reactionary doubt which is invariably engendered by excessive or tyran- nical dogma. The enterprise was not, however, exclusively secular in their case. The religious dogmatism which they opposed was only part of a general intellectual despotism, under which English thought of the freer sort had long groaned. Aristotle shared with Calvin supreme authority in English opinion- his rule in the realms of science being as absolute as Calvin's in the domain of religious doctrine. There was indeed no little similarity in spirit and method between the two systems, as then conceived and administered ; both agreed, e.g., in arrogating finality each in its own province, and therefore in opposing Novelty of Thought as the deadliest of human errors. According to Bacon's defini- tion, Aristotle was Antichrist, and Glanvill, together with other free-thinkers, were not far wrong in discerning a similar antagonism to Truth in certain phases of Calvinism. Against these twin giants, the " Pope and Pagan " of English Thought during the first half of the I7th century, Glanvill soon proceeded to set the battle in array. He attacked both the religious and scientific xm THE LIFE AND WORKS Dogmatism directly by pointing out their defects, and indirectly by inculcating as a counteracting principle what he terms the sceptical or free Philosophy. His first onslaught was made by his publication, in 1 66 1, of a work entitled " The Vanity of Dogmatizing or Confidence in Opinions 1 * "A remarkable work," says Hallam, "but one so scarce as to be hardly known at all except by name." He republished this work in an altered and improved form in 1665, prefixing to it a warm panegyric on the Royal Society. This amended edition is even rarer than the " Vanity of Dogma- tizing" the greater part of the impression having been destroyed in the Great Fire. Glanvill entitled it " Scepsis Scientifica? and it is this work which is presented to the English reader, after a lapse of two hundred and twenty years, in the ensuing pages. But although he styled his thought sceptical, and himself a sceptic, Glanvill did not employ those terms in the commonly received sense of wanton or unreasonable disbelief, but in the classical meaning of enquiry and judicial suspense. It is true he is not careful to discriminate accurately between suspense and negation, and his OF JOSEPH CLAN VI LL. x-vii definition of scepsis is always in the most general terms,* but there is no mistaking his usual conception of the principle or the mode of its application. It is best described as the principle opposed to excessive dogma, whether in Philosophy, Science or Religion. He defends his method in a noteworthy passage in the second of his collected essays (p. 44), which, as giving the key-note of the following treatise, deserves quotation. * Some mode of discrimination between Skepticism in its proper and primary sense of Enquiry, and in its perverted but usual sense of disbelief or Negation, seems ur- "gently needed. The writer has endeavoured to effect this in his work, " Evenings with the Skeptics? and elsewhere, by spelling the word when employed in its original sense as Skepticism. The persistent confusion that occurs between Suspense and Negation, even in accredited works on Philosophy, is not very complimentary to the progress of human thought. Few persons seem able to realize that Skepsis is as much opposed to Dogmatic Negation as to Dogmatic Affir- mation. In pp. 192-3 of the following treatise the reader will find Glanvill's view of the relation between Suspense and Nega- tion ; and perhaps the writer may be par- doned for referring on the same point to his work on the Skeptics above-mentioned. xviii THE LIFE AND WORKS " But the True Philosophers are by others accounted Scepticks from their way of Enquiry : which is not to continue still poring upon the writings and opinions of Philoso- phers, but to seek Truth in the great Book of Nature, and in that search to proceed with wariness and circumspection without too much forwardness in establishing maxims and positive doctrines : To propose their opinions as Hypotheseis that may probably be the true accounts, without peremptorily affirming that they are. This among others hath been the way of those great men, the Lord Bacon and Descartes, and is now the method of the Royal Society of London, whose motto is Nullius in Verba. This is Scepticism with some, and if it be so indeed, 'tis such Scepticism as is the only way to sure and grounded knowledge, to which confidence in uncertain opinions is the most fatal enemy." That the mode of thought thus indi- cated was well adapted to the needs of the time is obvious, though Glanvill never loses sight of the fact that it is likely to operate only among comprehensive and cultured thinkers. Readers of the Scepsis will find in chaps, xxvi. and xxvii. remarks on OF JOSEPH CLAN VI LL. xias the mischief which he considered had been caused in England by excessive dogma, and similar reflections occur throughout his works. In his defence of the Scepsis, e.g. he thus addresses his chief antagonist (Thomas White), who was a rabid Aris- totelian : " If we differ, then, 'tis only in this, that you think it more suitable to the requisites of the present age to depress scepticism, and perhaps I look on dogma- tizing and confident belief as the more dangerous and common evil." But although Glanvill designed his treatise as a counter- active to the thought-tendencies of his time, it is in itself an indirect outcome of the very influences which he deprecates. His assault on the Aristotelian Philosophy is conceived in the spirit and carried out by the method that marks mediaeval and scholastic Peripa- teticism, while he attacks current dogmatic Theology from the basis of the primary article in its creed. The latter point seems to merit a few remarks, as indicating the germ and evolution of his Skepticism. Curious as it may seem, it was a direct out- growth of his Puritan education, for it had as its starting point, The Fallible nature of humanity by means of the Fall. Few things xx THE LIFE AND WORKS indeed are more remarkable among the many strange mutual relations of Philosophy and Theology than the reciprocal action of the Philosophical doctrine of the weakness of human reason, and the Theological Dogma of the natural degeneracy of man- kind. While among the Greeks and ancient Hindus the experience of intellectual im- potence and limitation induced a theory of natural fallibility, among Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Pascal the dogma of the fall issued into a Skeptical theory of Intellectual imperfection. Thus Skepticism is oftentimes found to be in Christian specu- lation nothing else than the philosophical form of Original Sin. In Glanvill's case the Theological form of the doctrine not only leads up to its philosophical form, but be- comes merged and lost in it. He enlarges on this theme more in his Vanity of Dog- matizing than in his later Scepsis Sden- tifica. His introductory chapter in the former work consists of some bold specula- tions as to the perfection of Adam's Intellect before the Fall. So we are told that " all the powers and faculties of this copy of the Divinity, this meddal of God, were as per- fect as beauty and harmony in Idea. The OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. text soul was not clogg'd by the inactivity of its masse as ours ; nor hindered in its actings by the distemperature of indisposed organs. Passions kept their place as servants of the higher powers, and durst not arrogate the throne as now. .... Even the senses, the soul's windows, were without any spot or opacity : to liken them to the purest crystal were to debase them by the comparison . . . Adam needed no spectacles. The acuteness of his natural opticks (if conjecture may have credit) shewed him much of the celestial magnificence and bravery without a Galileo's tube : and 'tis most probable that his naked eyes could reach near as much of the upper world as we with all the advantages of Art .... His sight could inform him whether the Loadstone doth attract by Atomical Effluviums .... It may be he saw the motion of the blood and spirits through the transparent skin as we do the workings of those little industrious animals (bees) through a hive of glasse. . . . Sympathies and An- tipathies were to him no occult qualities, &c." ( Vanity of Dogmatizing, pp. 5-7). Much of this introduction may justify Hallam's criticism of it as rhapsodical, and Glanvill's fanciful surmises, which are, however, not xxii THE LIFE AND WORKS more extravagant than similar theological speculations of a bygone age, are con- siderably toned down in the "Scepsis" where the reader will find the following dis- claimer, better becoming a Skeptic : " But a particular knowledge of the blest advan- tages and happy circumstances of our primitive condition is lost with Innocence, and there are scarce any hints of conjecture from the present." Nevertheless, though more briefly and cautiously, the Scepsis Scientifica also insists upon man's inherent incapacity for knowledge, which Glanvill somewhat incongruously both laments as a lapse from his original perfection, and claims as a primary condition of wisdom. The second chapter is on "Our Decay and Ruines by the Fall," and consists of a lengthy elabora- tion of that subject. Succeeding chapters expand and illustrate the argument of human impotence, and insist on its only possible outcome of scepticism or judicial suspense on most moot points of speculation. ii. But although the Scepsis has its germ in Theological Dogma, its final de- velopment in Glanvill's mind must be ascribed to other influences, viz., to the free- thinking liberalizing culture which English OF JOSEPH CLAN VILL. xxiii literature of the i6th and i7th centuries had derived from Continental sources, chiefly from the leading thinkers of the Italian and French Renaissance. It is not sufficiently borne in mind that the Restoration, which brought back Charles II. and reinstated in a modified form the old monarchy, was also a Restoration of a literary movement which the civil troubles and rapid growth of Puritanism had arrested. During the Elizabethan era the works which still hold their place as the highest products of English culture were indebted largely for suggestion and shaping to Ariosto, Boccaccio, Dante, Montaigne, and Rabelais, and other names of " light and leading " in France and Italy ; but during the Civil War and the Commonwealth this importation of foreign thought became almost extinct. The fact, no doubt, admits of easy explanation. These foreign commodities were held to be con- traband, for the two reasons that they were incompetent to decide grave questions of political and religious controversy, and their free humanizing tendency was diametrically opposed to the Puritan spirit. They shared the fate which befel all mere secular litera- ture, all culture of the intellect for its own xxiv THE LIFE AND WORKS sake. They were sacrificed to that sour disdain of those graces which adorn and refine both letters and human life, which forms the ugliest feature of extreme Puri- tanism. But the stream of Continental enlightenment from whence Shakespeare and Spencer slaked their thirst had in reality not been destroyed by Puritanism, it had only been dammed, and when it burst its dykes at the Restoration, we cannot be surprised if it displayed all the greater force and volume on account of its confinement. Glanvill's works are among the earliest indications of this reflux of Continental thought. His chief teachers are Descartes, Montaigne, Charron, Gassendi. Many of the utterances in the Scepsis would suggest a close study of Montaigne's Essays. He often quotes him by name, and never without some commen- datory epithet. But it is probable that Glanvill, like Sir Walter Raleigh in his Sceptick, may have been indebted largely for his sceptical reasonings either to Henry Stephens' translation of the Hypotyposes of Sextus Empeirikos, or to Gassendi's repro- duction of the same arguments. In others of his writings Glanvill displays a similar predilection for the leading spirits of what OF JOSEPH G LAN V ILL. xxv he terms the Free Philosophy. This will serve to account for the suspicion and malevolence which his writings seem to have excited, for he became identified, albeit most unjustly (see his sermon, " Against Scoffing at Religion "), with the excessive libertinism which marked the thought and manners of Charles II.'s reign, and which was largely traceable to Continental sources. Not, how- ever, that these supplied all the motive causes of the reaction. There can be little question that Puritanism, notwithstanding its undeniable merits, helped to engender by its excessive austerity the licence that ensued upon the Restoration. Glanvill fully recog- nised this fact, and often takes occasion to remark on it in his writings. Thus he observes sententiously in one of his sermons, " The (religious) follies and divisions of one age make way for Atheism in the next." Indeed, Puritanism itself had, as every oppressive scheme of human thought and conduct must needs have, its own licentious side, besides inducing a reactionary excess in other systems. This is abundantly shown by its own distinctive literature, such works, e.g. as Edwards' Gangrena, and Bailey's Letters and Journals. The aim of Glan- c xxvi THE LIFE AND WORKS vill was to direct as far as he could the swollen current of free thought into proper and innocent channels to show that Con- tinental Humanism and Philosophy were reconcileable with a moderate and rational Christianity ; in a word, to prevent intellec- tual liberty from becoming "a cloke of maliciousness." For such an attempt no commendation can be deemed excessive. The methods of Puritanism, with its ex- treme other-worldliness, its rigid formalism, its stress on minutiae in speculation and conduct, its malevolent opposition to every form of recreation and pleasure whatever appeared likely to enliven human existence had a peculiarly cramping, numbing influ- ence on men's minds. It operated as Me- phistopheles said of the school logic : " Da wird der Geist euch wohl dressirt In Spanische stiefeln eingeschniirt." with the intensification that its strait-laced- ness claimed to have a religious basis. Some mode of liberation from this narrow and fanatical obscurantism was urgently needed what Glanvill indignantly terms " that Barbarism that made Magick of OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xxvii Mathematics and Heresie of Greek and Hebrew." What his proposed remedy was readers of the Scepsis will see for them- selves ; but there is one passage in his Essays wherein he speaks so explicitly of the broadening effects of Humanism and the Free Philosophy as opposed to current Superstition, Enthusiasm, and other foes of human Reason and Religion, that it merits quotation. The passage has an additional interest from its relation to Glanvill's well- known opinions on witchcraft. " Supersti- tion consists either in bestowing religious valuation and esteem on things in which there is no good, or fearing those in which there is no hurt. So that this folly expresseth itself one while in doting upon opinions as fundamentals of Faith, and idolizing the little models of fancy for Divine Institutions, and then it runs away afraid of harmless indifferent appointments, and looks pale upon the appearance of any unusual effect of Nature. It tells ominous stories of every meteor of the night, and makes sad interpre- tations of each unwonted accident. All which are the products of Ignorance and a narrow mind, which defeat the design of Religion, that would make us of a free, c-2. xxviii THE LIFE AND WORKS manly, and generous spirit, and indeed represent Christianity as if it were a fond, sneaking, weak and peevish thing, that emasculates men's understandings, making them amorous of toys, and keeping them under the servility of childish fears, so that hereby it is exposed to the distrust of larger minds, and to the scorn of Atheists. These and many more are the mischiefs of super- stition, as we have sadly seen and felt." " Now against this evil spirit and its in- fluences the real experimental Philosophy is one of the best securities in the world. For by a generous and open enquiry in the great field of Nature, men's minds are enlarged and taken off from all fond adherencies to their private sentiments. They are taught by it that certainty is not in many things, and that the most valuable knowledge is the practical. By which means they will find themselves disposed to more indifferency towards those petty notions in which they were before apt to place a great deal of religion ; and to reckon that all that will signifie lies in the few certain operative principles of the gospel and a life suitable to such a Faith. . . . Besides which (by making the soul great), this knowledge delivers it OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xxix from fondness on small circumstances, and imaginary models, and from little scrupu- losities about things indifferent, which usu- ally work disquiet in narrow and contracted spirits, and I have known divers whom Philosophy and not disputes, hath cured of this malady." (Essay iv., pp. 13-14). In thus asserting a broad culture of Humanism and scientific thought as the best antidote to a narrow, intolerant Theology, Glanvill acted in conformity not only with his own free instincts, but with the best teachings of history no law of human progress being better attested than the beneficent effects of Nature study and liberal speculation, on those who have been dieted too exclusively on Theological food. iii. The last sentence of this passage is interesting as probably referring to the Latitudinarians, as they were termed by "men of narrower thoughts and fiercer tempers," says Burnet. They formed that party in the church who found refuge in Philosophical Research and Platonic meta- physics from the religious and other con- troversies of the time, and whose credenda might be succinctly described as Armen- ianism ; A stress upon human Reason as xxx THE LIFE AND WORKS against extraneous authority ; Aversion to dogma on speculative subjects ; Belief in Immutable Morality ; Large if not universal tolerance of religious opinions ; and Belief in the Pre-existence of Souls. It is true Glanvill's name does not occur in ordinary enumerations of the leaders of this party, or, if mentioned, occupies only a secondary place, but readers of the Scepsis will readily perceive how entirely his sympathies accord with the tenets we have just named. In- deed, with two of the most prominent members of the party, Dr. Henry More and Bishop Rust, he seems to have been on terms of personal and intimate friendship. It is however certain that he considered himself as much a member of that school of thought, as that he was a Fellow of the Royal Society. Nor does he manifest any dislike to the epithet Latitudinarian, when duly interpreted, which was its customary desig- nation. It conveyed a protest against narrowness and intolerance, which he appre- ciated just as heartily as Bishop Thirlwall in our day, and for the same reason, did the title of Broad Churchman. Omitting for lack of space other points of affinity which connect Glanvill with the Cambridge Pla- OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xxxi tonists, we limit our remarks to his undog- matic and comprehensive presentation of Christianity, with regard to which he may claim a place second to none of the party. Glanvill's view of the Christian Religion may be summed up by the epithets Primi- tive and Rational. Like Pascal he is an example of that appeal to the personal teaching of Christ, which is the best and only resource of the thoughtful intellect, when distracted by conflicting and irrational Dogmas. From the swollen and turbid stream of ecclesiastical tradition, he turns back to the pure and limpid fountain, which rises amid the mountains of Galilee. Hence he assures us that " he owns no opinion in Divinity which cannot plead the prescrip- tion of above 1600." .... As a be- liever in Immutable Morality, he contends that, " Divine Truths were most pure in their source and Time could not perfect what Eternity began. Our Divinity, like the Grandfather of Humanity, was born in the fulness of Time, and in the strength of its manly vigour." He maintains a dis- tinction in this respect between Natural and Divine Truth, " Natural Truths are more and more discovered by Time .... xxxii THE LIFE AND WORKS But these Divine Verities are most perfect in their fountain, and original. They con- tract impurities in their streams and remote derivations." This theme, incidentally touched upon in the "Scepsis? is fully developed in his Essays, and in his sermon "On the Antiquity of our Faith" whence the last extract is taken. He calls the two great commandments of the Gospels, " Those Evangelical Unquestionables." The comparative allegiance he conceives himself to own to Primitive Christianity on the one hand, and the tenets of the English Church on the other, he thus indicates : " Contenting myself with a firm assent to the few Fundamentals of Faith, and having fixed that end of the compass, I desire to preserve my liberty as to the rest, holding the other in such a posture as may be ready to draw these lines, my judgment informed by the Holy Oracles, the Articles of our Church, the apprehensions of wise antiquity and my particular reason shall direct me to describe : and when I do that," he adds with noble and Christian tolerance, " 'tis for myself and my own satisfaction. I am not concerned to impose my sentiments upon others, nor do I care to endeavour OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xxxiii the change of their minds, though I judge them mistaken, as long as Virtue, the Interests of Religion, the Peace of the World, and their own, are not prejudiced by their errors." Glanvill's significant simile of the compasses, and his idea of the latitude the church allowed in ordinary matters of speculation, receives a further illustration from his preface to " Lux Orientalist "It is none of the least commendable indul- gences of our church that she allows us a latitude of judging in points of speculation, and ties not up men's consciences to an implicit assenting to opinions not necessary or fundamental .... Nor is there less reason in this parental indulgence than there is of Christian charity and prudence ; since to tie all others up to our opinions and to impose difficult and disputable matters under the notion of Confessions of Faith, and Fundamentals of Religion, is a most unchristian piece of tyranny, the foundation of persecution, and every root of Anti- christianism." Nor is he unprepared with an answer to the delicate and crucial question What are Fundamentals? His reply forms the fifth of his Collected Essays, and of a sermon ad clerum^ which he xxxiv THE LIFE AND WORKS entitled \o~fov Op^a/ceia (The Service of Reason), to which we must refer our readers. Suffice it to say, that Glanvill's opinion of the essentials of Religion is marked by extreme simplicity, the most generous com- prehension, and the noblest scorn of long and difficult Creeds and Confessions. Such schemes of Belief were, we need hardly say, very frequent during the years im- mediately following the Restoration. Hardly a Divine of note could be named, either among the clergy or the Nonconformists, who did not try his hand at devising a system of Belief for the National Church. As a rule these designs serve only to illus- trate the narrow conceptions of the would- be ecclesiastical architects. The scheme propounded by Glanvill is probably unique for its exceedingly broad and undogmatic spirit. That it should have been deliberately put forth amid the scenes of ecclesiastical and political tyranny, which disgrace our annals from 1662 onwards, gives it the appearance almost of a grave satirical jest. The church erected on Glanvill's Funda- mentals might have been acceptable to some ideal community some imaginary city of Bensalem, in New Atlantis it was OF JOSEPH CLAN VILL. xxxv evidently unsuited by its very excellencies for the England of the I7th century. iv. But Glanvill is not only an advocate of broad religious and literary culture, as required by the exigencies of his time, he also insists on a specific pursuit of natural science i.e. the New Philosophy of Ex- periment, such as was taught by Bacon, Descartes and the Royal Society. The advocacy was in truth urgently needed. For we must remember that this new move- ment of thought, notwithstanding a few propitious circumstances, soon found itself in antagonism to various reactionary forces, which followed upon the Restoration, and which may be described as a recoil towards Mediaevalism. It is true the Royal Society received its charter in 1662, and its small band of Fellows were doing their utmost to promote experimental Science as it was then understood ; but this at first was no more than an insignificant back- eddy by the side of a broad and rapid onward current. Of this retrograde move- ment, the House of Commons, which as Macaulay says, "was more loyal than the King, and more Episcopal than the Bishops," was the political centre, but of its philoso- xxxvi THE LIFE AND WORKS phical and Theological phases, the University of Oxford was the stronghold. Here then were two concurrent reactionary move- ments, each aided by the other, towards Scholasticism in Philosophy, and Sacer- dotalism in Theology. The first took the form of an exclusive devotion to Aristotle, and the second so far shared this worship as to maintain that all the Philosophy and Science an orthodox divine needed were contained in the same repository of Greek wisdom. The advice of Marlowe's Faust : " Having commenced, be a Divine in show, Yet level at the end of every art, And live and die in Aristotle's works," still summarized the essentials of clerical training as taught by the largest English University. Bearing this in mind, we are able to discern what the animus against Aristotle, disclosed in the Scepsis Scien- tifica, and Glanvill's other writings, really signified. It was not mere opposition to the doctrines of the greatest of Greek Scientific Teachers. From his long and intimate connexion, almost amounting to identification, with mediaeval Catholicism, OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xxxvii the name of Aristotle had become the symbol of pre-Reformation ideas, not only in Philosophy, but in Theology as well. It was the recognized banner of an anti- quated Dogmatism, from which the freer minds of Europe were detaching themselves. The extent of this movement which had derived impetus from the ascendancy of Puritanism (for all the leading Calvinists were Aristotelians) is sufficiently shown by the number of Peripatetic Teachers con- temporary with Glanvill, and some of them his own personal antagonists. Even enlightened thinkers, like Meric Casaubon, felt compelled to take up arms in defence of the Stagirite, and to deprecate a too hasty or complete sundering of the associa- tions that clustered round his venerable name. If among a number of concurrent causes, any single one be selected as the chief power, which in England helped to dethrone Aristotle, and the medievalism with which his name had become identified, it is the foundation of the Royal Society, and the newly awakened enthusiasm, on behalf of Natural Science, of which it was the focus. Those who have dipped into the earlier volumes of the Philosophical xxxviii THE LIFE AND WORKS Transactions, are aware of the fact that the proceedings of the Society consti- tuted at first a kind of tacit crusade against Aristotle. No doubt the Society itself was only a practical outcome of the Philosophies of Bacon and Descartes, but it is character- istic of the English intellect, that mere philosophical theory obtains little popular recognition until it has been embodied, en- forced and illustrated by actual experiment. Glanvill was a foremost combatant in the struggle. He came forward as the advocate of Freethought and experimental Science, the uncompromising foe of Aristotelianism, the enthusiastic disciple of Bacon and Descartes. To the great French thinker we must ascribe a preponderating share in the moulding of his intellect, for though his veneration for Bacon was great, it was exceeded by his regard for Descartes, whom he addresses in terms of fulsome, and even extravagant, panegyric. He speaks of him as " the grand Secretary of Nature, the miraculous Descartes." "That great man, possibly the greatest that ever was," &c. Probably the more critical analytic and direct method of the French Thinker was better suited to Glanvill's intellect than the OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xxxix practical, yet somewhat ponderous, system of the English Philosopher. Certainly the Discourse on Method afforded a shorter road to Skepticism than the devious route supplied by the Novum Organum. Besides the attack on Aristotle contained in the Scepsis Glanvill returns to the sub- ject in more than one of his subsequent writings, especially in his work Plus Ultra, published in 1668, and afterwards epitomized in the third of his collected Essays " Of the modern Improvements of Useful Know- ledge." His stand-point in the Plus Ultra, and his other writings on the same topic, are even now of considerable interest. We are thereby made aware that Glanvill's age was emphatically an age of Discovery and Invention in every department of human knowledge. Galileo's " tube " was as yet a novelty ; Harvey had not long discovered the circulation of the blood ; the Barometer, Thermometer, Microscope and Air-pump were comparatively recent inventions. New discoveries in Geography, and thereby, as Glanvill remarked, a larger field for human speculation were of continual occurrence. At the very time the Plus Ultra was published, Newton, then a young man of xl THE LIFE AND WORK'S twenty-four, was pursuing those studies which gave to Glanvill's enthusiastic fore- cast of the future a far more prophetic character than he, even in his most sanguine moments, would have dared to anticipate. In short, the human intellect, after long and devious wanderings, had reached the bounds of the "Wonderland" of Modern Science, and expectation was rife as to the disclosures likely to follow ; Glanvill was one of the first to prognosticate a glorious future for English and European Science. His enthusiasm is in part depicted in his address to the Royal Society, prefixed to the Scepsis. But its fullest expression is found in his Plus Ultra. This is indeed a cheering cry of " Forward " for all lovers of Knowledge, as well as a much needed protest against the Dogmatic and Immobile " Ne Plus Ultra" of the past. v. It is with regret that we turn from that phase of Glanvill's intellect which has most affinity with the present to another aspect of it, closely allied with the remote past, from the enlightened advocate of natural Science to the apologist for antiquated and gross superstition, from the author of Scepsis Scientifica and Plus Ultra to the writer OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xli of Saddutismus Triumphatusj or, a Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions. Such a conjunction is, how- ever, not unparalleled. Many instances occur both among ancient and modern thinkers of a cautious skepticism in one direction being counterbalanced by a sur- plusage of faith in another. Nor is Glanvill's philosophical suspense totally unrelated to his witch-beliefs. Skepticism, we must remember, is largely a cleansing process, and may possibly result in the admission into the swept and garnished intellect of some other spirits more wicked than the single one exorcised. He indeed calls attention to the connexion between his Scepsis and his Book on Witches (Sad. Tri. p. 7), the plea for the existence of such supernatural beings as witches being based on that very ignorance of the hidden processes of Nature which it is the object of the Scepsis to set forth and demonstrate. There are besides other points of connexion between this superstition of Glanvill's and his general environment and mental confor- mation. With all his desire to emancipate himself from the Puritanism of the Common- wealth, his thought betrays occasional sym- d xlii THE LIFE AND WORKS pathies with its origin, as we have already incidentally noted. Here, at least, he is in full accord with the despised Sectaries. No article of Puritan faith was more firmly grounded than that which related to the reality and malefic power of witches, and GlanvilFs work on the subject is only one of a large number written by " enthusiasts " and Sectaries whose other credenda he would have disdainfully rejected. No doubt the dominating element in his intellectual forma- tion was not Sentiment nor Intuition, but Reason. Still, it was Reason qualified by emotional sensitiveness, as well as by an eager powerful imagination, which sometimes carried him further than he wanted to go. His " warm, spruce and gay fancy " is ap- parent in all his works, even in those which treat of science and philosophy ; but in no direction does he allow it freer flight than within the confines of the spirit world. We must therefore find in his uncompromising belief in the existence and perpetual activity of non-material Beings a primary motive of his witch-faith. But the work had also a polemical object. It was written to confute the materialists of his time. '"Tis well known," he says, " that the Sadducees denied OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xliii the existence of spirits and the Immortality of Souls, and the heresie is sadly revived in our days." (Essay iv. p. 8). On the truth of the latter statement it is needless to dilate. All who are acquainted with the chief under- currents of English speculation during the latter half of Charles II.'s reign are aware that not the least influential among them was an unthinking and gross materialism, which was in itself, let us add, only the natural reaction of Puritan dogmatism as to the manifold activities of the world of spirits. This materialism Glanvill attacks in the most vehement fashion. Not only was the denial of spirits unjustifiable, but it was unphilosophical. It set an absolute barrier to speculation. It asserted a finality which was both arbitrary and incapable of proof, and it left many unquestioned facts in human history without any rational basis. But once the existence and continuous energy of good spirits were admitted, then, according to Glanvill, there must needs be bad spirits as well, and their activities will probably be no less varied. The inference, though in an opposite direction, was pre- cisely that by which Goethe's Supernaturalist xliv THE LIFE AND WORKS on the Brocken inferred the existence of good spirits : " Denn von den Teufeln kann ich ja Auf Gute Geister schliessen." We have no space to dwell further on Glanvill's " Vanquished Sadducieism," nor to resuscitate the Demon of Tedworth and other fantastic spectres of equal authenticity from the oblivion which is their just due. The argument of the book is in form Inductive. Glanvill bases his proof on what he terms a choice collection of modern Relations, but it is in truth a travesty of the Inductive method, and betrays a ludicrous misconception of the nature of human testimony. But while we assign to Glanvill's witch-beliefs their merited estimate, we must remember that we cannot fairly blame him for not being in advance of his time. His benighted condition on this subject was shared by most of his compeers in English thought. Boyle, Henry More, Meric Casau- bon, Baxter, Cudworth, all believed fully in Witchcraft, and most of them wrote in its defence. Glanvill's own co-Fellows of the Royal Society were similarly fully persuaded OF JOSEPH GLANVILL. xlv of the truth of Alchymy, and in some cases attested their scientific instincts by a diligent search for the philosopher's stone. Bacon himself believed in the transmutation of metals, and Sir Kenelm Digby's sympathetic powder and weapon salve found numerous recipients as credulous as their author. On the whole, then, while we cannot exonerate the author of the Scepsis from sharing an unworthy and degrading superstition, we must allow him the extenuating circum- stances which are always due when a man's errors are the outcome of his environment. After all, a thinker's claim to stand in the forefront of the speculation of his time must be determined not by an impossible freedom from all the errors by which he is surrounded, but by such a comparative immunity from some of them, as enables him to reach forward to, and represent the Knowledge and enlightenment of the Future. Readers of the Scepsis, the Plus Ultra^ and the col- lected " Essays" will have no difficulty in claiming such a position for Joseph Glanvill. Our space rather than the interest of the subject is exhausted. All we have attempted is to set before the readers of the ensuing treatise, such particulars as to the life and xlvi THE LIFE AND WORKS, &t. thought of its author as seemed likely to enhance their appreciation of his work, and to aid its fuller comprehension. Let us add, that the spirit and intent of Glanvill's work seems to us of more durable worth than its form, though this also is charged with manifold interest. As long as men are constituted as they are, the peace and wel- fare of the world will always be imperilled by excessive dogma, or too confident Belief on many moot points of speculation, not only in Philosophy and Theology, but in Science, Politics, and other departments of human thought which deal with indetermin- able matters and issues, and therefore there will always be room for a Scientific Skep- ticism for the enquiry and judicial suspense of the truly wise man. AN ADDRESS, &c. TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY. Illustrious Gentlemen, THE name of your Honorable Society is so August and Glorious, and this trifle to which 1 have prefixt it, of so mean, and so unsuitable a quality ; that ''tis fit I should five an account of an action so seemingly T^ "J I obnoxious. And I can expect no other from those, that judge by first sights and rash measures, then to be thought fond or insolent ; or, as one that hath unmeet thoughts of him- self, or YOU. But if a naked profession may have credit in a case wherein no other evidence can be given of an intention ; / adventured not on this Address upon the usual Motives of Dedications. It was not upon design to credit these Papers (which yet derive much accidental Honour from the occasion.") Nor to complement a Society so much above Flattery, and the regardless air of common Applauses. I intended not your / AN ADDRESS TO THE Illustrious Name the dishonour of being Fence against detraction for a performance, which possibly deserves it. Nor was it to publish how much I honour You ; which were to fancy my self considerable. Much less was 1 so fond, to think I could contribute any thing to a Constellation of Worthies from whom the Learned World expects to be in- formed. But, considering how much it is the interest of Mankinde in order to the advance of Knowledge, to be sensible they have not yet attained it ; or at least, but in poor and diminutive measures ; and regarding Your Society as the strongest Argument to per- swade a modest and reserved diffidence in opinions, I took the boldness to borrow that deservedly celebrated name, for an evidence . to my Subject ; that so what was wanting in my Proof, might be made up in the Example. For If we were yet arrived to certain and infallible Accounts in Nature, from whom might we more reasonably expect them then from a Number of Men, whom, their impar- tial Search, wary Procedure, deep Sagacity, twisted Endeavours, ample Fortunes, and all other advantages, have rendered infinitely more likely to have succeeded in those En- quiries ; then the sloth, haste, and babble of ROYAL SOCIETY. li talking Disputants ; or the greatest industry of single and less qualified Attempters? If therefore those (whom, I am in no danger of being disbelieved by any that understand the world and them, if I call the most learned and ingenious Society in Europe.) if they, I say, confess the narrowness of humane attain- ments, and dare not confide in the most plausible of their Sentiments ; if such great and instructed Spirits think we have not as yet Phasnomena enough to make as much as Hypotheseis ; much less, to fix certain Laws and prescribe Methods to Nature in her Actings: what insolence is it then in the lesser size of Mortals, who possibly know nothing but what they glearid from some little Systeme, or tJie Disputes of Men that love to swagger for Opinions, to boast Infalli- bility of Knowledge, and swear they see the Sun at Midnight ! Nor was this the only inducement to the dishonour I have done you in the direction of these worthless Papers ; But I must confess I designed hereby to serve my self in another interest. For having been so hardy as to un- dertake a charge against the Philosophy of t fie Schools, and to attempt upon a name which among some is yet very Sacred, / was lyable Hi AN ADDRESS TO THE to have been overborne by a Torrent of Au- thorities, and to have had the voyce of my single reason against it, drowrfd in the noise of Multitudes of Applauders / That I might not therefore be vapour* d down by Insig- nificant Testimonies, or venture bare reasons against what the doating world counts more valuable, I presumed to use the great Name of your Society to annihilate all such argu- ments. And I cannot think that any, that is but indifferently impudent, will have the confidence to urge, either the greatness of the Authour, or the number of its Admirers in behalf of that Philosophy, after the ROYAL SOCIETY is mention W. For though your Honourable and ingenious Assembly hath not so little to do, as to Dispute with Men that count it a great attainment to be able to talk much, and little to the purpose : And though you have not thought it worth your labour to enter a profess 1 d dissent against a Philosophy which the greatest part of the Virtuosi, and enquiring spirits of Europe have deserted, as a meer maze of words, and useless contrivance : Yet the credit which the Mathematicks have with you, your ex- perimental way 0/" Enquiry, and Mechanical Attempts for solving the Phenomena ; be- ROYAL SOCIETY. liii sides that some of you (to whose excellent works the learned world is deeply indebted) publickly own the Cartesian and Atomical Hypotheseis ; TJtese, I say, are arguments of your no great javour to the Aristotelian. For indeed that disputing physiology is of no accommodation to your designs ; which are not to teach Men to cant endlessly about Materia, and Forma ; to hunt Chimaera's by rules of Art, or to dress up Ignorance in words of bulk and sound, which shall stop the mouth 0/" enquiry, and make learned fools seem Oracles among the populace : But the improving the minds oj Men in solid and useful notices of things, helping them to such Theories as may be serviceable to common life, and the searching out the true laws of Matter and Motion, in order to the securing of the Foundations of Religion against all attempts of Mechanical Atheism. In order to the Furtherance (according to my poor measure] of which great and worthy purposes, these Papers were first intended. For perceiving that several ingenious per- sons whose assistance might be conducive to the Advance of real and useful Knowledge, lay under the prejudices of Education and Customary Belief; / thought that the en- liv AN ADDRESS TO THE larging them to a state of more generous Freedom by striking at the root of Pedantry and opinionative Assurance would be no hinder-ance to the Worlds improvement. For Such it was then that the ensuing Essay was designed; which therefore wears a dress, that possibly is not so suitable to the graver Geniusses, who have outgrown all gayeties of style and youthful relishes ; But yet per- haps is not improper for the persons, for whom it was prepared. And there is no- thing in words and styles but suitableness, that makes them acceptable and effective. If therefore this Discourse, such as it is, may tend to the removal of any accidental disad- vantages from capable Ingenuities, and the preparing them for inquiry, / know you have so noble an ardour for the benefit of Mankind, (is to pardon a weak and defective perform- ance to a laudable and well-directed inten- tion. And though, if you were acted by the spirit of common Mortals, you need not care for the propagation of that gallantry and intellectual grandeur which you are so emi- nently owners of, since 'tis a greater credit, and possibly pleasure, to be wise when few are so ; yet you being no Factors for Glory or Treasure, but disinteressed Attempters ROYAL SOCIETY. lv for the universal good, cannot but favourably regard any thing, that in the least degree may do the considering World a kindness ; and to enable it with the spirit that inspires the RO YAL SOCIETY, were to advantage it in one of the best Capacities in which it is improveable. These Papers then (as I have intimated} having been directed to an End subordinate to this, viz. the disposing the less stupid Minds for that honour and improve- ment ; / thought it very proper to call up their eyes to you, and to fix them on their Example/ That so natural Ambition might take part with reason and their interest to encourage imitation. In order to which, I think it needless to endeavour to celebrate you in a profest Encomium ; since customary Strains and affected Juvenilities have made it difficult to commend, and speak credibly in Dedications ; And your deserts, impos- sible in this. So that he that undertakes it, must either be wanting to your merits, or speak things that will find but little credit among those that do not know You. Or, Possibly such, as will be interpreted only as what of course is said on such occasions, rather because 'tis usual, then because 'tis just. But the splendour of a Society, illus- Ivi AN ADDRESS TO THE trious both by blood and vertue, excuseth my Pen from a subject, in which it must either appear vain, or be defective. / had much rather take notice therefore, how providen- tially you are met together in Dayes, wherein people of weak Heads on the one hand, and vile affections on the other, have made an unnatural divorce between being Wise and Good. These conceiving Reason and Philo- sophy sufficient vouchees of Licentious prac- tices and their secret scorn of Religion ; and Those reckoning it a great instance of Piety and devout Zeal, vehemently to declaim against Reason and Philosophy. And wJtat result can be expected from such supposals, That 'tis a piece of Wit and Gallantry to be an Atheist, and of Atheism to be a Philo- sopher, but Irreligion on the one side, and Superstition on the other, which will end in open irreclaimeable Atheism on both ? Now it seems to me a signality in Providence in erecting your most Honourable Society in such a juncture of dangerous Humours, the very mention of which is evidence, that Atheism is impudent in pretending to Philo- sophy ; And Superstition sottishly ignorant in phancying, that the knowledge of Nature tends to Irreligion. But to leave this latter ROYAL SOCIETY. Ivii to ifs conceits, and the little impertinencies of humour and folly it is fond of: The former is more dangerous, though not more reasonable. For where 'tis once presumed, that the whole Fabrick of Religion is built upon Ignorance of the Nature of things ; And the belief of a God, ariseth from un- acquaintance with the Laws of Matter and Motion ; what can be the issue of such pre- sumptions, but that those that are so per- swaded, should desire to be wise in a way that will gratifie their Appetites . And so give up themselves to the swinge of their un- bounded propensions? Yea, and those, the impiety of whose lives makes them regret a Deity, and secretly wish there were none will greedily listen to a Doctrine that strikes at the existence of a Being, the sense of whom is a restraint and check upon the licence of their Actions. And thus all wickedness and debauches will flow in upon the world like a mighty deluge, and beat down all the Banks of Laws, Vertue, and Sobriety before them. Now though few have yet arrived to that pitch of Impiety, or rather Folly, openly to own such sentiments ; yet, I doubt, this con- cealment derives rather from the fear of e Iviii AN ADDRESS TO THE Man, then from the love or fear of any Being above him. And what the confident exploding of all immaterial Substances, the unbounded prerogatives are bestowed upon Matter, and the consequent assertions, signifie, you need not be informed. I could wish there were less reason to suspect them branches of a dangerous Cabbala. For the ingenious World being grown quite weary of Qualities and Formes, and declaring in favour of the Mechanical Hypothesis, (to which a person that is not -very fond oj Religion is a great pretender) divers of the brisker Geniusses, who desire rather to be accounted Witts, then endeavour to be so, Jiave been willing to accept Mechanism upon Hobbian conditions, and many others were in danger of following them into the pre- cipice. So that *tis not conceivable how a more suitable remedy could have been provided against the deadly influence oj that Contagion, then your Honourable Society, by which the meanest intellects may perceive, that Mechanick Philosophy yields no security to irreligion, and that those that would be gentilely learned and ingenious* need not purchase it, at the dear rate of being Atheists. Nor can the prolep- ROYAL SOCIETY. lix tical notions of Religion be so well defended by the profest Servants of the Altar, who usually suppose them, and are less furnished with advantages for such speculations ; so that their Attempts in this kind will be interpreted by such as are not willing to be convinced, as the products of interest, or ignorance in Mechanicks ; which suspicions can never be derived upon a Society of persons of Quality and Honour, who are embodied for no other interest but that of the Publique, and whose abilities in this kind are too bright to admit the least shadow of the other Censure. And 'tis to be hoped, that the eminence of your con- dition, and the gallantry of your Principles, which are worthy those that own them, will invite Gentlemen to the useful and enobling study of Nature, and make Philosophy fashionable ; whereas while that which tfie World caltd so, consisted of nought but dry Spinosities, lean Notions, and endless Alter- ations about things of nothing, all unbecom- ing Men of generous Spirit and Education ; of use no where but where folkes are bound to talk by a Law, and profest by few but persons of ordinary condition ; while, I say, Philosophy was of such a nature, and e 2 Ix AN ADDRESS TO THE cloathed with such circumstances, how could it be otherwise then contemptible, in the esteem of the more enfranchised and sprightly tempers ? So that your Illustrious Society hath redeemed the credit of Philosophy ; and I hope to see it accounted a piece of none of the meanest breeding to be acquainted with the Laws of Nature and the Universe. And doubtless there is nothing wherein men of birth and fortune would better consult their treble interest of PLEASURE, ESTATE, and HONOUR, then by such generous researches. In which (i.) theft find all the innocent satisfactions which use to follow victory, variety, and surprise, the usual sources of our best tasted pleasures. And perhaps humane nature meets few more sweetly relishing and cleanly joyes, then those, that derive from the happy issues of successful Tryals : Yea, whether they succeed to the answering the particular aim of the Naturalist or not ; 'it's however a pleasant spectacle to behold the shifts, windings and unexpected Caprichios of distressed Nature, when pursued by a close and well managed Experiment. And the delights which result from these nobler entertainments are such, as our cool and reflecting thoughts need not ROYAL SOCIETY. Ixi be ashamed of. And which are dogged by no such sad sequels as are the products oj those titillations that reach no higher then Phancy and the Senses. And that alone deserves to be calFd so, which is pleasure without guilt or pain. Nor (2.) have the frugaller Sons of fortune any reason to object the Costliness of the delights we speak of, since, in all likelyhood, they frequently pay dearer^r less advantagious pleasures. And it may be tJiere are few better wayes ^/adding to what they are ajffraid to waste, then in- quiries into Nature. For by a skilful appli- cation of those notices, may be gain' d in such researches, besides the accelerating and bet- tering of Fruits, emptying Mines, drayning Fens and Marshes, which may hereby be effected, at much more easie and less ex- pensive rates, then by the common methods of such performances : / say, besides these, Lands may be advanced to scarce credible degrees of improvement, and innumerable other advantages may be obtain'd by an industry directed by Philosophy and Me- chanicks, which can never be expected from drudging Ignorance. But though those in- quisitive pursuits of things should make out no pretence to Pleasure or Advantage ; yet Ixii AN ADDRESS TO THE upon tJte last Account (3.) of Honour, they are infinitely recommendable to all that have any sense of such an interest. For 'tis a greater credit, if -we judge by equal measures, to understand t/ie Art -whereby the Almighty Wisdom governs the Motions of the great Automaton, and to know the wayes of captivating Nature, and making her subserve our purposes and designments ; then to have learnt all the intrigues of Policy, andtJte Cabals of States and King- doms ; yea, then to triumph in the head of victorious Troops over conquer'd Empires. Those successes being more glorious which bring benefit to tJie World; then such ruinous ones as are dyed in humane blood, and cloathed in the livery of Cruelty and Slaughter. Nor are these all the advantages upon the Account of which we owe acknowledgments to Providence for your erection ; since from your promising and generous endeavours, we may hopefully expect a considerable in- largement of the History of Nature, without which our Hypotheseis are but Dreams and Romances, and our Science meer conjecture and opinion. For while we frame Scheames ROYAL SOCIETY. Ixiii of things without consulting the Phaenomena, we do but build in the Air, and describe an Imaginary World of our own making, that is but little a kin to the real one that God made. And 'it's possible that all the Hypo- theseis that yet have been contrived, -were built upon too narrow an inspection of things, and the phasies of the Universe. For the advancing day of experimental knowledge discloseth such appearances, as will not lye even, in any model extant. And perhaps the newly discovered Ring about Saturn, to mention no more, will scarce be accounted for by any systeme oj tilings the World hath yet been acquainted with. So that little can be looked for towards the advancement of natural Theory, but from those, that are likely to mend our prospect of events and sensible appear- ances ; the defect of which will suffer us to proceed no further towards Science, then to imperfect guesses, and timerous supposals. And from whom can this great and noble Acquist be expected, if not from a Society of persons that can command both Wit and Fortune to serve them, and professedly ingage both in experimental pursuits of Nature? Ixiv AN ADDRESS TO THE The desired success of which kind of ingage- ments cannot so reasonably be looked for from any in the known Universe, as from your most Honourable Society, where fond- ness of preconceiv'd opinions, sordid In- terests, or affectation of strange Relations, are not like to render your reports suspect or partial, nor want of Sagacity, Fortune, or Care, defective : some of which possibly have been ingredients in most former ex- periments. So that the relations of your Tryals may be received as undoubted Records #/" certain events, and as securely be depended on, as the Propositions of Euclide. Which advantage cannot be hoped from private undertakers, or Societies less qualified and conspicuous then Yours. And how great a benefit such a Natural History as may be confided in, will prove to the whole stock oj learned Mankinde, those that understand the interest of the inquiring World may con- jecture. Doubtless, the success of those your great and Catholick Endeavours will pro- mote the Empire of Man over Nature ; and bring plentiful accession of Glory to your Nation ; making BRITAIN more justly famous then the once celebrated GREECE ; ROYAL SOCIETY. Ixv and LONDON tJie wiser ATHENS. For You really are what former Ages could contrive but in wish and Romances ; and Solomons House in the NEW ATLANTIS was a Prophetick Scheam of the ROYAL SOCIETY. And though such August designs as inspire your enquiries, use to be derided by drolling phantasticks, that have only wit enough to make others and them- selves ridiculous : Yet therms no reproach in the scoffs of Ignorance ; and those that are wise enough to understand your worth, and the merit of your endeavours, will contemn the silly taunts of fleering Buffoonry ; and the jerks of that Wit, that is but a kind of confident, and well-acted folly. And 'tis v none of the least considerable expectations that may be reasonably had of your Society, that 'twill discredit that toyishness of wanton fancy ; and pluck the misapplyed name of the WITS, from those conceited Humourists that have assumed it ; to bestow it upon the more manly spirit and genius, tftat playes not tricks with words, norfrolicks with the Caprices of froathy imagination : But imployes a severe reason in enquiries into the momentous concernments of the Universe. Ijeoi AN ADDRESS TO THE On consideration of all which Accounts, / think it just you should have acknowledg- ments from all the Sons and Favourers oj Wisdom : and I cannot believe it a crime for me to own my part of those obligations (though in a slender offering) for which all the thoughtful and awakened World is your debtour ; no more then 'twas a fault to pay the tribute penny to Caesar, or is a piece of guilt to be dutiful. And though perhaps 1 have not so well consulted the repute of my in- tellectuals, in bringing their weaknesses and imperfections into such discerning presences ; yet I am well content, if thereby I have given any proof of an honest will, and well- meaning Morals ; And 1 think, I can with- out repugnance Sacrifice the former, to an occasion of gaining myself this latter and better Testimony ; of which disposition, I say, I am now giving an instance in pre- senting so Illustrious an Assembly with a Discourse, that hath nothing to recommend it, but the devotion wherewith 'tis cffer'd them. And really when I compare this little and mean performance, with the vast- ness of my subject ; / am discouragM by the disproportion : And me thinks I have ROYAL SOCIETY. Ixvii brought but a Cockle-shell of water from the Ocean : Whatever I look upon within the amplitude of heaven and earth, is evidence of humane ignorance ; For all things are a great darkness to us, and we are so unto our selves : The plainest things are as obscure, as the most confessedly mysterious ; and the Plants we tread on, are as much above us, as tJie Stars and Heavens. The things that touch us are as distant from us, as the Pole ; and we are as much strangers to our selves, as to the inhabitants oj America. On review of which, me thinks I could begin a new to describe the poverty of our intellectual acquisitions, and the vanity of bold opinion ; Which the Dog- matists themselves demonstrate in all the controversies they are engaged in ; each party being confident that the others confidence is vain ; from which a third may more reason- ably conclude the same of the confidence of both. And methinks there should need no more to reduce disputing men to modest acknowledgments, and more becoming temper, then the consideration ; That there is not any thing about which the reason of Man is capable of being imployed, but hath been Ixviii AN ADDRESS TO THE the subject of Dispute, and diversity of apprehension. So that, as the excellent Lord Mountaigne hath observed, [Mankind is agreed in nothing ; no, not in this, that the heavens are over us ;] every man almost differing^ww another ; Yea, and every man from himself : And yet every man is assur'd of his own Scheams of conjecture, though he cannot hold this assurance, but by this proud absurdity, That he alone is in the right, and all the rest of the World mistaken. I say then, there being so much to be produced both from the natural and moral World to the shame of boasting Ignorance ; the ensuing Treatise, which with a timerous and unassur'd countenance adventures into your presence, can pride it self in no higher title, then that of an ESS A Y, or imperfect offer at a Subject, to which it could not do right but by dis- coursing all things. On which consideration, I had once resolved to suffer this Trifle tti pass both out of Print and Memory ; But another thought suggesting, that the in- stances I had given of humane Ignorance were not only clear ones, but such as are not so ordinarily suspected ; from which to our ROYAL SOCIETY. Ixix shortness in most things else, 'tis an easie inference, and a potiori, I was perswaded, and somewhat by experience, that it might not be altogetJier unuseful in the capacities 'twas intended for ; And on these Accounts I suffer 3 d this Publication ; to which (without vanity I speak if) I found so faint an in- clination, that I could have been well content to suffer it to have slipt into the state of eternal silence and oblivion. For I must confess that way of writing to be less agree- able to my present relish and Genius ; which is more gratified with manly sense, flowing in a natural and unaffected Eloquence, then in the musick and curiosity of fine Metaphors and dancing periods. To which measure of my present humour, 1 had indeavour'd to reduce the style of these Papers ; but that I was loth to give my self that trouble in an Affair, to which I was grown too cold to be much concerned in. And this inactivity of temper perswaded me, I might reasonably expect a pardon from the ingenious,yfrr faults committed in an immaturity of Age and Judgment that would excuse them ; and perhaps I may have still need to plead it to atone for the imperfections of this Address : Ixx By which, though I have exposed deformities to the clearest Sunshine, that some others prudence would have directed into the shades and more private recesses ; Yet I am secure to lose nothing by the adventure that is com- parably valued by me as is the Honour of declaring my self, Illustrious Gentlemen, The most humble Admirer of Your August Society, Jos, GlanvilL SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA ; OR, THE VANITY OF DOGMATIZING. SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA; OR, THE VANITY OF DOGMATIZING. CHAP. I. A general Description of the state of Primi- tive Ignorance ; by -way of Introduction. T T 7 HAT ever is the Innocence and. Infelicity V of the present state, we cannot, with- out affronting the Divine Goodness, deny, but that at first we were made wise and happy; For nothing of spetifick imperfection or de- formity could come from the hands that were directed by an Almighty Wisdome; so that, whatever disorders have since befallen them, all things were at first disposed by an Om- niscient Intellect that cannot contrive ineptly; and 'our selves exactly formed according to the Jd