Note 337 — THE CONCLUSION: COMPREHENDING A RETROSPECT OF THE LIFE OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE,

Bacon (the celebrated Viscount of St. Albans and Baron of Verulam) published his great philosophical work, the Novum Organum, in the year 1620. The learned and sagacious professor Cooper remarks, that “Lord Bacon” (whom the honourable Mr. Walpole considers as the Prophet of the Arts, which Newton came to reveal,) “was the first among the moderns, who pointed out the way by which real knowledge was to be obtained, and turned the minds of the learned from playing tricks with syllogisms, and the legerdemain of words without ideas; and taught them to rest theory upon the basis of experiment alone.” See the Introductory Lecture of Thomas Cooper, Esq. Professor of Chemistry at Carlisle College, Pennsylvania.