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THE CANTUARIAN
unity to him. He had no need, like Uccello, or Piero della Francesca in his "Prospetlia Puiguendi" to attempt to relate painting to Plato's arithmetic. His sense of values show.ed him that each had a place and a task in existel!ce, and that creation was a positive actIvIty wIth a delil11te goa \. Tn other respects, too, hIS values were, for those days, quite remarkable. We know of no one who described war as "bestial madness"; and there were exceedingly few, in a period of interstate wars, feuds, vendettas whiell might last a century, CIVIl strife and such an atmosphere of unrest, who would even think of it as such. Nor would anyone else who had invented a submarine, and the use of gas in war, have rejected fame and a fortune by refusing to divul ge his secret, on Ihe grounds that he would be unleashing too devilish a weapon on mankind.
Soon he became completely taken up with science. A pupil wrote of him that he co uld not get the master to come even to look at his work, as he was so frantica lly and perpetuall y engaged in stud ying shells or plants. His ambition was to find the causes of Nature, and to do this he must om it nothing, he must give every minute deta il its due of im portance and never, never accept a ny til ing that was on ly "possible" or "probable"; experience alone sufficed. To give a just estimation of his scientific wo rk wo uld require an encyclopaed Ic WIdth of knowledge. He was the first great anatomist. He was denounccd by the Pope for his numerous dissections of human bodies (although Michaelangelo was allowed to dissect). All condemned him for it, but Dr. William Hunter said tnat Leonardo was the ~reatest physician and anatomist of his day. Many are the branches of sCIence m wluch ne mcreased and surpassed all knowledge of that time. He was often centuries ahead in his methods. For instance, no one, until 1890, had the idea of pouring wax into the ventricles of the brain, and so obtaining an exact cast; Leonardo however outlines tI,e process in great detail. Perhaps of all the sciences geology fascinated him most-the study of tI,e vastest masses on earth, a part of Nature and with laws as sure and immutable as those of the tenderest flower. He virtually introduced Geology into the class of sciences, as it had hitherto been a lmost entirely neglected. He developed rema rkable new geological methods many of which are sti ll used. He could explain the strata of rocks, he could am r~ that the mo untains that soared so high had once been under the sea basing his view On data received from such objects as fossil s, shells a nd varying strata. Likewise his methods discoveries in and statements o n light and o ptics, hydraulics and water, movement and weight, flight and atmosphere, astronomy and aco ustics, physiology and anatomy revea l an innate scientific sense and co nsiderable grasp of each. In fact, .he gave a new aspect to all he undertook, often revolutionising a science, or even creatmg new realms of knowledge. The secret lies in that he was Ihe first man to study science on a basis of observed fact-he called it experience. In his scientific thought he was almost a portent of ages still to come, centuries ahead of his times . His contemporaries could scarcely have understood him, had he said (as he wrote): "The man '.':ho in an argument addres~es authority is not using his intellect, but only hIS m~n:ory . HI~ contempt for the Ar!stotehans~ the adducers of authority, is genuine and bltmg, espeCIally when he comes mto conflIct WIth them over his new methods. "The disciples of Aristotle, men of wo rds and book, think, because I am not a man of letters as .they are, that I am incapable of speaking upon my own subjects. They do not perceIve that my matter IS to be expounded rather by experience than by words: expenence whIch tru ly has been the mstructress of all those who have written well ; which r take for my instructress, by which, in all cases, I will stand or fall", 309