Then it was, that, in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Occidental mind, astir under
the oceanic movements of the modern, arose to break the spell of
scholasticism that had fettered and frozen the intellect of man. An
all-invading spirit of inquiry, analysis, skepticism, became rife. An
unappeasable hunger for facts, facts, facts, took possession of the
general intellect. It was felt that abstraction was disease, was
death,--that speculation had to be vitalized and enriched from
experience and experiment. This tendency was inevitable and sublime, no
doubt. But it remains for modern times to emulate Nature and carry on
analysis and synthesis at once. A great discovery is the birth of the
whole soul in its creative activity. Induction becomes fruitful only
when married to Deduction. It is those luminous intuitions that light
along the path of discovery that give the eye and animus to
generalization. Science must be open to influx and new beneficent
affections and powers, and so add fleet wings to the mind in its
exploration of Nature.
In Kepler was the perfect realization of the highest mission of Method.
Powerfully deductive in the structure of his intellect, nourished on
the divine bread of Plato and the Mystics, he yet united to these a
Baconian breadth of practical power.
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