Note 446 — Chapter IV

Leslie's Natural Philosophy, p. 201; Bordas Demoulin, Le Cartésianisme, vol. i. p. 310. Sir John Herschel (Disc. on Nat. Philos. pp. 229, 230) calls this ‘one of the first, if not the very first,’ crucial instance recorded in physics; and he thinks that it ‘tended, more powerfully than any thing which had previously been done in science, to confirm in the minds of men that disposition to experimental verification which had scarcely yet taken full and secure root.’ In this point of view, the addition it actually made to knowledge is the smallest part of its merit.