It is to be regretted, however, that the eminent Lord Chief Justice Hale in 1664, presiding at the trial for witchcraft of two women, should have called Dr. Browne, apparently as amicus curiae, to give his view of the fits which were supposed to be the work of the witches.  He was clearly of the opinion that the Devil had even more to do with that case than he has with most cases of hysteria; and consequently the witches, it must be said, fared no better in Sir Matthew Hale’s court than many of their kind in various parts of Christendom about the same time.  But it would be unreasonable for us to hold the ghost of Sir Thomas deeply culpable because, while he showed in most matters an exceptionally enlightened liberality of opinion and practice, in this one particular he declined to deny the scientific dictum of previous ages and the popular belief of his own time.

The mental attitude of reverent belief in its symbolic value, in which this devout philosopher contemplated the material world, is that of many of those who have since helped most to build the structure of Natural Science.  The rapturous exclamation of Linnaeus, “My God, I think thy thoughts after thee!” comes like an antiphonal response by “the man of flowers” to these passages in the ’Religio Medici’:—­“This visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.”  “Things are really true as they correspond unto God’s conception; and have so much verity as they hold of conformity unto that intellect, in whose idea they had their first determinations.”

[Illustration:  Signature:  Fr’s.  Bacon]

FROM THE ‘RELIGIO MEDICI’

I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that from which within a few days I should dissent myself.  I have no genius to disputes in religion, and have often thought it wisdom to decline them, especially upon a disadvantage, or when the cause of truth might suffer in the weakness of my patronage.  Where we desire to be informed, ’tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, ’tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.  Every man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity:  many from the ignorance of these maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal for truth, have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.  A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender; ’tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace, than to hazard her on a battle:  if therefore there rise any doubts in my way, I do