Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/473

The Wars of Religion 349 595. Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. Francis Bacon, an Eng- lish lawyer and government official, spent his spare hours in explaining how men could increase their knowledge. He too wrote in his native tongue as well as in Latin. He was the most eloquent representative of the new science which renounced authority and relied upon experiment, " We are the ancients," he declared, not those who lived long ago when the world was young and men ignorant. Late in life he began to write a little book, which he never finished, called the New Atlantis. It describes an imaginary state which some Euro- pean mariners were sup- posed to have discovered on an island in the Pa- cific Ocean. The chief institution was a " House of Solomon," a great laboratory for carrying on scientific investigation in the hope of discovering new facts and using them for bettering the condi- tion of the inhabitants. This House of Solomon became a model for the Royal Society, established in London some fifty years after Bacon's death. It still exists and publishes its proceedings. 596. Scientific Societies Founded. The earliest societies for scientific research grew up in Italy. Later the English Royal Society and the French Institute were established, as well as similar associations in Germany. These were the first things of LORD BACON