On one occasion, lie hears that Baptista Porta, whom he calls 'a philosopher of no ordinary note' said that a piece of iron rubbed with a diamond turns to the north. He suspects this to be heresy. So, forthwith he proceeds to test the statement by experiment. He was not dazzled by the reputation of Baptista Porta; he respected Porta, but respected truth even more. He tells us that he experimented with seventy-five diamonds in presence of many witnesses, employing a number of iron bars and pieces of wire, manipulating them with the greatest care while they floated on corks; and he concludes his long and exhaustive research by plaintively saying: "Yet never was it granted me to see the effect mentioned by Porta."
Though it led to a negative result, this probing inquiry was a masterpiece of experimental work.
Gilbert incidentally regrets that the men of his time "are deplorably ignorant with respect to natural things,"' and the only way he sees to remedy this is to make them "quit the sort of learning that comes only from books and that rests only on vain arguments and conjectures," for he shrewdly remarks that "even men of acute intelligence without actual knowledge of facts and in the absence of experiment easily fall into error."
Acting on this intimate conviction, he labored for eighteen years over the theories and experiments which he sets forth in his great work on the magnet. "There is naught in these books," he tells us, "that has not been investigated, and again and again done and repeated under our eyes." He begs any one that should feel disposed to challenge his results to repeat the experiments for himself "carefully, skilfully and deftly, but not heedlessly and bunglingly."
It has often been said that we are indebted to Sir Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth's Chancellor, for the inductive method of studjing the phenomena of nature. This is an error, for all investigators employed it from Archimedes the Syracusan down to Gilbert, the contemporary of Lord Verulam.[1] Bacon's merit lies in the fact that he not only minutely analyzed the method, pointing out its uses and abuses, but also that he admitted it to be the only one by which we can attain an accurate knowledge of the physical world around us. His sententious eulogy went forth to the world of scholars invested with all the importance, authority and dignity which the high position and worldwide fame of the philosophic Chancellor could give it. But while Bacon thought and wrote in his study, Gilbert labored and toiled in his workshop. By his quill. Bacon made a profound impression on the philosophic mind of his age; by his researches, Gilbert explored two
- ↑ Bacon was raised to the peerage as Baron Verulam, and was subsequently created Viscount St. Albans; where, then, is the propriety of calling him Lord Bacon?
