Born, at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, 25 Dec. 1642. At Grantham Grammar School, 1654–56, 1660–61. Matric., Trin. Coll., Camb., as Subsizar, 5 June 1661; Scholar 28 April 1664; B.A., Jan. 1665. Occupied in mathematical investigations. First idea of law of Universal Gravitation, 1665. At Woolsthorpe, 1665–67. Returned to Cambridge, 1667; Fellow of Trin. Coll., 1 Oct. 1667; Lucasian Professor, 1669–1701. F.R.S., 11 Jan. 1672; Member of Council, 1699. M.P. for Cambridge Univ., 1689. Warden of the Mint, March 1696; Master, 1699. Foreign Associate of French Academy, 1699. M.P. for Cambridge Univ., Nov. 1701 to July 1702. Pres. of Royal Soc., 1703–27. Knighted, 15 April 1705. Died, at Kensington, 20 March, 1727. Buried in Westminster Abbey. Works: Newton’s published works number upwards of 230. A full list is given in G. J. Gray’s “Bibliography of the Works of Sir Isaac Newton,” 1888. The “Principia” was published in 1687. Collected Works: ed. by S. Horsley, (incomplete), in 5 vols., 1779–85. Life: by Sir David Brewster, 2nd edn. 1860.

Personal

  What I heard to-day I must relate. There is one Mr. Newton (whom I have very often seen), Fellow of Trinity College, that is mighty famous for his learning, being a most excellent mathematician, philosopher, divine, &c…. Of all the books he ever wrote there was one of colours and light, established upon thousands of experiments, which he had been twenty years making, and which had cost him many hundreds of pounds. This book, which he valued so much, and which was so much talked of, had the ill-luck to perish and be utterly lost, just when the learned author was almost at pushing a conclusion to the same, after this manner:—In a winter’s morning, leaving it among his other papers on his study table, whilst he went to chapel, the candle, which he had unfortunately left burning there too, catched hold by some means of other papers, and they fired the aforesaid book, and utterly consumed it and several other valuable writings, and, which is most wonderful, did no further mischief. But when Mr. Newton came from chapel, and had seen what was done, every one thought he would have run mad; he was so troubled thereat that he was not himself for a month after.

  I have been, ever since I first knew you, so entirely and sincerely your friend, and thought you so much mine, that I could not have believed what you tell me of yourself, had I had it from any body else. And, though I cannot but be mightily troubled that you should have had so many wrong and unjust thoughts of me, yet next to the return of good offices, such as from a sincere good will I have ever done you, I receive your acknowledgement of the contrary as the kindest thing you have done me, since it gives me hopes I have not lost a friend I so much valued.

  Sir,—Upon hearing occasionally that you had sent a letter to Dr. Wallis about the parallax of the fixed stars to be printed, and that you had mentioned me therein with respect to the theory of the moon, I was concerned to be publicly brought upon the stage about what, perhaps, will never be fitted for the public, and thereby the world put into an expectation of what, perhaps, they are never like to have. I do not love to be printed upon every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things, or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them, when I should be about the King’s business; and, therefore, I desired Dr. Gregory to write to Dr. Wallis against printing that clause, which related to that theory, and mentioned me about it. You may let the world know, if you please, how well you are stored with observations of all sorts, and what calculations you have made towards rectifying the theories of the heavenly motions. But there may be cases wherein your friends should not be published without their leave; and therefore I hope you will so order the matter, that I may not, on this occasion, be brought upon the stage.—I am your humble servant,

  I have had another contest with the President of the Royal Society, who had formed a plot to make my instruments theirs, and sent for me to a Committee, where only himself and two physicians (Dr. Sloane, and another as little skilful as himself) were present. The President ran himself into a great heat, and very indecent passion. I had resolved aforehand his kn——sh talk should not move me; showed him that all the instruments in the observatory were my own—the mural arc and voluble quadrant having been made at my own charge, the rest purchased with my own money, except the sextant and two clocks, which were given me by Sir Jonas Moore, with Mr. Townley’s micrometer, his gift some years before I came to Greenwich…. I complained then of my Catalogue being printed by Raymer (Dr. Halley) without my knowledge, and that I was robbed of the fruits of my labours. At this he fired, and called me all the ill names, puppy, &c. that he could think of. All I returned was, I put him in mind of his passion, desired him to govern it and keep his temper. This made him rage worse: and he told me how much I had received from the Government in 36 years I had served. I asked what he had done for the L.500 per annum that he had received ever since he settled in London. This made him calmer…. Dr. Sloane had said nothing all this while; the other Doctor told me I was proud, and insulted the President, and ran into the same passion with the President. At my going out, I called to Dr. Sloane, told him he had behaved himself civilly, and thanked him for it. I saw Raymer after, drank a dish of coffee with him, and told him, still calmly, of the villany of his conduct, and called it blockish. Since then they let me be quiet; but how long will they do so I know not, nor am I solicitous.

  The corpse of sir Isaac Newton, which was buried on Tuesday (March 28) in the abbey, from the Jerusalem chamber, was followed to the grave by a great many persons of quality and distinction, to shew the respect they bore to that unquestionably great man, and six noble peers supported the pall. Yesterday (March 29) John Conduit, esq., M.P. for Whitchurch, received his patent constituting him master worker of his majesty’s mint in the Tower, in the room of sir Isaac Newton deceased.

  I hear sir Isaac Newton died intestate, tho’, besides a considerable paternal estate, he was worth in money twenty-seven thousand pounds. He had promised to be a benefactor to the Royal society, but failed. Some time before he died, a great quarrel happened between him and Dr. Halley, so as they fell to bad language. This, ’tis thought, so much discomposed sir Isaac as to hasten his end. Sir Isaac died in great pain, though he was not sick, which pain proceeded from some inward decay, as appeared from opening him. He is buried in Westminster abbey. Sir Isaac was a man of no promising aspect. He was a short well-set man. He was full of thought, and spoke very little in company, so that his conversation was not agreeable. When he rode in his coach, one arm would be out of the coach on one side, and the other on the other. He hath left behind him a MS. chronology compleat, and ordered it to be printed. Some years ago sir Isaac was much troubled with a lethargy, occasioned by too much thinking, but he had got it off pretty well before he died.

  I also conversed at different times with the illustrious Newton, who died in the month of March at the age of eighty-five. He read manuscript without spectacles, and without bringing it near his eyes. He still reasoned acutely as he was wont to do, and told me that his memory only had failed him…. A few weeks before his death he threw into the fire many manuscripts written in his own hand…. He was not only deeply versed in mathematics and philosophy, but likewise in theology and ecclesiastical history.

	Say, ye who best can tell, ye happy few,
	Who saw him in the softest lights of life,
	All unwithheld, indulging to his friends
	The vast unborrowed treasures of his mind,
	Oh, speak the wondrous man! how mild, how calm,
	How greatly humble, how divinely good;
	How firm stablished on eternal truth;
	Fervent in doing well, with every nerve
	Still pressing on, forgetful of the past,
	And panting for perfection; far above
	Those little cares, and visionary joys,
	That so perplex the fond impassioned heart
	Of ever-cheated, ever-trusting Man.

  His carriage then was very meek, sedate, and humble, never seemingly angry, of profound thought, his countenance mild, pleasant, and comely. I cannot say I ever saw him laugh but once…. Oftimes he has forgot to eat at all, so that, going into his chamber, I have found his mess untouched, of which when I have reminded him he would reply, “Have I?” and then, making to the table, would eat a bit or two standing, for I cannot say I ever saw him set at table by himself…. He very rarely went to bed till two or three of the clock, sometimes not till five or six, lying about four or five hours…. He very rarely went to dine in the hall, except on some public days, and then, if he has not been minded, would go very carelessly with shoes down at heels, stockings untied, surpliced on, and his head scarcely combed.

  I have heard my father often say that he has been a witness of what the world has so often heard of,—Sir Isaac’s forgetfulness of his food when intent upon his studies; and of his rising in a pleasant manner with the satisfaction of having found out some proposition, without any concern for a seeming want of his night’s sleep, which he was sensible he had lost thereby.

  As he sat alone in a garden, he fell into a speculation on the power of gravity, that as this power is not found sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth to which we can rise … it appeared to him reasonable to conclude that this power must extend much farther than is usually thought. Why not as high as the moon? said he to himself, and, if so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby.

  Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said: “I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

  It is not at all improbable that Sir Isaac Newton, though so great a man, might have had a hankering after the French prophets. There was a time when he was possessed with the old fooleries of astrology; and another when he was so far gone in those of chemistry, as to be upon the hunt after the philosopher’s stone.

	ISAACUS NEWTONUS:
	Quem Immortalem
	Testantur Tempus, Natura, Cœlum:
	Mortalem
	Hoc marmor fatetur.
	Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night:
	God said, Let Newton be! and all was Light.

	Here Lies
	Sir Isaac Newton, Knight,
	Who, by a vigour of mind almost supernatural,
	First demonstrated
	The motions and Figures of the Planets,
	The Paths of the Comets, and the Tides of the Ocean.
	He diligently investigated
	The different refrangibilities of the Rays of Light,
	And the properties of the Colours to which they give rise.
	An Assiduous, Sagacious, and Faithful Interpreter
	of Nature, Antiquity, and the Holy Scriptures,
	He asserted in his Philosophy the Majesty of God,
	And exhibited in his Conduct the simplicity of the Gospel
	Let Mortals rejoice
	That there has existed such and so great
	AN ORNAMENT OF THE HUMAN RACE.
	Born 25th Dec. 1642, Died 20th March, 1727.

  Sir Isaac Newton, though so deep in Algebra and Fluxions, could not readily make up a common account: and, when he was Master of the Mint, used to get somebody to make up his accounts for him.

  Sir Isaac Newton’s house at Coldsworth is a handsome structure.—His study boarded round, and all jutting out. We were in the room where he was born. Both of as melancholy and dismal an air as ever I saw. Mr. Percival, his tenant, who still lives there, says he was a man of very few words; that he would sometimes be silent and thoughtful for above a quarter of an hour together, and look all the while almost as if he was saying his prayers: but that when he did speak, it was always very much to the purpose.

  The want of a life of Newton, on a scale and of a character commensurate with the dignity and importance of the subject, cannot but be regarded as a reproach to our national literature…. We cannot, however, help observing as somewhat singular, that in Newton’s own university, where his name is, not unjustly, idolized, and his works have long furnished the established studies of the place—where, moreover, there exist valuable materials and a multitude of local traditions and associations—and where there have not been wanting a succession of men, since his death, possessed of the highest qualifications for the task, not one should have been found to pay this tribute to his memory.

  Right or wrong, Newton never faced opinion. As soon as he found that publication involved opposition, from that time forward he published only with the utmost reluctance, and under the strongest persuasions; except when, as in the case of some of his theological writings, he confided the manuscript to a friend, to be anonymously published abroad. The “Principia” was extorted from him by the Royal Society; the first publication on fluctions was under the name of Wallis; the “Optics” were delayed until the death of Hooke; the first appearance against Leibnitz was anonymous; the second originated in a hint from the King. This morbid fear, which is often represented as modesty, would have made him, had he acted a part with regard to his niece which he could not avow, conduct it with the utmost reserve.

  To-day I told the driver to take me to St. Martin’s, where the guide-book says that Newton lived. He put me down at the Newton Hotel, but I looked in vain to its top to see anything like an observatory. I went into a wine-shop near, and asked a girl, who was pouring out a dram, in which house Newton lived. She pointed, not to the hotel, but to a house next to a church, and said, “That’s it—don’t you see a place on the top? That’s where he used to study nights.” It is a little, oblong-shaped observatory, built apparently of wood, and blackened by age. The house is a good-looking one—it seems to be of stone. The girl said the rooms were let for shops.

  In raising the statue which preserves his likeness, near the place of his birth, on the spot where his prodigious faculties were unfolded and trained, we at once gratify our honest pride as citizens of the same State, and humbly testify our grateful sense of the Divine goodness which deigned to bestow upon our race one so marvellously gifted to comprehend the works of Infinite Wisdom, and so piously resolved to make all his study of them the source of religious contemplations, both philosophical and sublime.

  On March 28, 1727, the body of Sir Isaac Newton, after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, where it had been brought from his deathbed in Kensington, was attended by the leading members of the Royal Society, and buried at the public cost in the spot in front of the Choir, which, being “one of the most conspicuous in the Abbey, had been previously refused to various noblemen who had applied for it.” Voltaire was present at the funeral. The selection of this spot for such a purpose marks the moment at which the more sacred recesses in the interior of the church were considered to be closed, or to have lost their special attractions, whilst the publicity of the wide and open spaces hitherto neglected gave them a new importance. On the gravestone are written the words, which here acquire a significance of more than usual solemnity—“Hic depositum quod mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni.”

  He was not a simple-minded man in the sense propounded: he was not like the old philosopher who knocked his foot against a stone while he was looking at the stars. Though not learned in human nature, he was very much the man of the world; he stuck to the main chance, and knew how to make a cast. He took good care of his money, and left a large fortune, though very—even magnificently—liberal on suitable occasions, especially to his family. He was observant of small things, as are all men of suspicious temperament; and he had a strong hatred of immorality, whether in word or deed, which, no doubt, would have turned his acuteness of observation, and his tendency to suspicion, upon anything from which inference could have been drawn. Those who imagine that Newton was always thinking of gravitation might just as well imagine that Wellington was always thinking of strategy.

  It was here [St. Martin’s Street] that the antiquary Dr. Stukely called one day, by appointment. The servant who opened the door said that Sir Isaac was in his study. No one was permitted to disturb him there; but as it was near his dinner-time the visitor sat down to wait for him. In a short time a boiled chicken under cover was brought in for dinner. An hour passed, and Sir Isaac did not appear. The doctor then ate the fowl, and, covering up the empty dish, desired the servant to get another dressed for his master. Before that was ready, the great man came down. He apologised for his delay, and added: “Give me but leave to take my short dinner, and I shall be at your service. I am fatigued and faint.” Saying this, he lifted up the cover, and without emotion turned about to Stukely with a smile. “See,” he said, “what we studious people are; I forgot that I had dined.”

  Newton’s marvellous insight into the order of Nature increased his reverence for the Creator. He spent much time in study of the Bible; and when he became foremost in fame among philosophers, and there was wonder at the comprehensive character of his discoveries, he said only: “To myself I seem to have been as a child picking up stones on the sea-shore, while the great ocean of truth lay unexplored before me.”

  Most of the great predecessors of Newton passed through the ordeal of misfortune and failed not. His own lot was far different. And yet, perhaps, his trial was even more searching. To emerge at the end of a long life of unbroken success, of continuous prosperity, with heart still warm; to endure for half a century wealth and honours, the enthusiasm of his countrymen, the admiration of all men, and still to keep sympathy alive, and still to hold fast his faith, is a stronger test of the stuff a man is made of than the steadfast endurance of suffering or the dangerous witness to truth.

  Sir Isaac Newton is a remarkable instance of a distinguished man who never travelled. Whilst in mind he surveyed the heavens and journeyed to the remotest stars, he traversed in body but a tiny portion of the earth.

  Many of the greatest men of genius have doubtless been single men, their passion of knowledge absorbing all other passions. Probably Newton never knew love, nor even the love of fame.

  Here is a man sent by Heaven to do certain things which no man else could do, and so long as he is comparatively unknown he does them; but so soon as he is found out, he is clapped into a routine office with a big salary: and there is, comparatively speaking, an end of him. It is not to be supposed that he had lost his power, for he frequently solved problems very quickly which had been given out by great Continental mathematicians as a challenge to the world…. I expect your truly great man never realizes how great he is, and seldom knows where his real strength lies. Certainly Newton did not know it. He several times talks of giving up philosophy altogether; and though he never really does it, and perhaps the feeling is one only born of some temporary overwork, yet he does not sacrifice everything else to it as he surely must had he been conscious of his own greatness. No; self-consciousness was the last thing that affected him.

  The story that this train of thought was aroused by seeing an apple fall is due to Voltaire, and is given in his “Philosophie de Newton,” 3^me partie, chap. iii. Voltaire had it from Newton’s step-niece, Mrs. Conduitt. For many years tradition marked the tree in the garden at Woolsthorpe; it was shown to Sir D. Brewster in 1814, and was taken down in 1820.

Leibnitz Controversy

  The celebrated Leibnitz may perhaps inquire how I became acquainted with the calculus which I use. About the month of April, and the following months in the year 1687, and subsequent years, when nobody, as I thought, used such a calculus but myself, I invented its fundamental principles, and several of its rules. Nor would it have been less known to me if Leibnitz had never been born. He may, therefore, boast of other disciples, but certainly not of me. And this would be sufficiently evident if the letters which passed between me and the illustrious Huygens were given to the public. Compelled by the evidence of facts, I hold Newton to have been the first inventor of the calculus, and the earliest by several years: And whether Leibnitz, its second inventor, has borrowed anything from him, I would prefer to my own judgment that of those who have seen the letters of Newton and copies of his other manuscripts. Nor will the silence of the more modest Newton, or the active exertions of Leibnitz in everywhere ascribing the invention of this calculus to himself, impose upon any person who shall examine these documents as I have done.

  We have consulted the letters and letter-books in the custody of the Royal Society, and those found among the papers of Mr. John Collins, dated between the years 1669 and 1677 inclusive; and showed them to such as knew and avouched the hands of Mr. Barrow, Mr. Collins, Mr. Oldenburg, and Mr. Leibnitz; and compared those of Mr. Gregory with one another, and with copies of some of them taken in the hand of Mr. Collins; and have extracted from them what relates to the matter referred to us; all which extracts herewith delivered to you, we believe to be genuine and authentic; and by these letters and papers we find,—
  I.  That Mr. Leibnitz was in London in the beginning of the year 1673; and went thence, in or about March, to Paris; where he kept a correspondence with Mr. Collins, by means of Mr. Oldenburg, till about September 1676, and then returned by London and Amsterdam to Hanover: and that Mr. Collins was very free in communicating to able mathematicians, what he had received from Mr. Newton and Mr. Gregory.
  II.  That when Mr. Leibnitz was the first time in London, he contented for the invention of another differential method properly so called, and notwithstanding that he was shown by Dr. Pell, that it was Mouton’s method, he persisted in maintaining it to be his own invention, by reason that he had found it by himself, without knowing what Mouton had done before, and had much improved it. And we find no mention of his having any other differential method than Mouton’s, before his letter of 21st June 1677, which was a year after a copy of Mr. Newton’s letter, of the 10th December 1672, had been sent to Paris to be communicated to him; and above four years after, Mr. Collins began to communicate that letter to his correspondent; in which letter the method of fluxions was sufficiently described to any intelligent person.
  III.  That by Mr. Newton’s letter of the 13th June 1676, it appears that he had the method of Fluxions above five years before the writing of that letter, and by his Analysis, per Æquationes numero Terminorum Infinitas, communicated by Dr. Barrow to Mr. Collins in July 1669, we find that he had invented the method before that time.
  IV.  That the differential method is one and the same with the method of fluxions, excepting the name and mode of notation; Mr. Leibnitz calling those quantities differences, which Mr. Newton calls moments or fluxions; and marking them with the letter d, a mark not used by Mr. Newton. And therefore we take the proper question to be, not who invented this or that method, but who was the first inventor of the method; and we believe, that those who have reputed Mr. Leibnitz the first inventor, knew little or nothing of his correspondence with Mr. Collins and Mr. Oldenburg long before; nor of Mr. Newton’s having that method above fifteen years before Mr. Leibnitz began to publish it in the “Acta Eruditorum” of Leipsic. For which reasons we reckon Mr. Newton the first inventor; and are of opinion that Mr. Keill, in asserting the same, has been noways injurious to Mr. Leibnitz. And we submit to the judgment of the Society, whether the extracts, and letters, and papers, now presented, together with what is extant to the same purpose, in Dr. Wallis’s third volume, may not deserve to be made public.

  I confess to you sincerely that till we had seen the “Commercium Epistolicum,” it was commonly believed here that Leibnitz was the first inventor of the Differential Calculus, or at least the first publisher of it, though it was as well known that Sir Isaac Newton was master of the secret at the same time; but as he did not challenge it, we could not be undeceived, and what I said concerning it was upon the credit of the common belief, which I did not find contradicted. But since it is so now, I promise you I will change my language whenever there is an opportunity, for I do assure you that it has been my study all my lifetime, to keep myself free from any partiality, whether national or personal, nothing being my concern but truth.

  It was long disputed whether the honour of inventing the method of Fluxions belonged to Newton or to Leibnitz. It is now generally allowed that these great men made the same discovery at the same time. Mathematical science, indeed, had then reached such a point, that if neither of them had ever existed, the principle must inevitably have occurred to some person within a few years.

  The verdict is universal and irreversible that the English preceded the German philosopher, by at least ten years, in the invention of fluxions. Newton could not have borrowed from Leibnitz; but Leibnitz might have borrowed from Newton.

  As both of these illustrious men could justly claim the honour of the disputed invention, so both, in the conduct of the controversy, and in the virulence of expression to which they were carried, in their reciprocal charges and accusations, exhibit themselves in much the same sorry light as the Philosopher in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who begins to lecture the rival masters of dancing and fencing out of Seneca, and ends by forgetting that he is a philosopher altogether. The controversy is indeed an instructive spectacle of human infirmity—showing how passion can cloud the serenest intellects, and inflame the most philosophic temperaments; that its thunder-storms may be found in the highest latitudes—disturbing the frigid poles as well as the burning tropics; that there is no domain of speculation, however remote, or purely abstract, into which it cannot intrude; and that the Mathematician, as well as the Theologian, can exhibit all the rancour of the most vulgar controvertists. There is probably nothing parallel in history, except the controversy between the Nominalists and Realists, who actually began to fight for and against their shadowy universals.

  It is not easy to penetrate into the motives by which this great man was actuated. If his object was to keep possession of his discoveries till he had brought them to a higher degree of perfection, we may approve of the propriety, though we cannot admire the prudence, of such a step. If he wished to retain to himself his own methods, in order that he alone might have the advantage of them, in prosecuting his physical inquiries, we cannot reconcile so selfish a measure with that openness and generosity of character which marked the whole of his life, nor with the communications which he so freely made to Barrow, Collins, and others. If he withheld his labours from the world in order to avoid the disputes and contentions to which they might give rise, he adopted the very worst method of securing his tranquility. That this was the leading motive under which he acted, there is little reason to doubt. The early delay in the publication of his method of fluxions, after the breaking out of the plague at Cambridge, was probably owing to his not having completed the whole of his design; but no apology can be made for the imprudence of withholding it any longer from the public,—an imprudence which is the most inexplicable, as he was repeatedly urged by Wallis, Halley, and his other friends, to present it to the world. Had he published the noble discovery previous to 1673, when his great rival had made but little progress in those studies which led him to the same method, he would have secured to himself the undivided honour of the invention, and Leibnitz could have aspired to no other fame but that of an improver of the doctrine of fluxions. But he unfortunately acted otherwise. He announced to his friends that he possessed a method of great generality and power: He communicated to them a general account of its principles and applications; and the information which was thus conveyed, might have directed the attention of mathematicians to subjects to which they would not have otherwise applied their powers. The discoveries which he had previously made were made subsequently by others; and Leibnitz, instead of appearing on the theatre of science as the disciple and the follower of Newton, stood forth with all the dignity of a second inventor; and, by the early publication of his discoveries, had nearly placed himself on the throne which Newton was destined to ascend…. In adjudicating on a great question like the present, surrounded as it has been with national sympathies, we are compelled to look into the character of the parties at our bar. We cannot commend the conduct of Newton in concealing from Leibnitz, in transposed letters, the discoveries which he had made, nor can we justify his personal retreat from the battle-field, and his return under the vizor of an accomplished champion. His representatives, however, were men of station and character, who gave their names, and staked their reputation in the contest; while Leibnitz and his disciples wielded the anonymous shafts of the slanderer, denied what they had written, and were publicly exposed through the very rents which they had left in their masks.

  The controversy was decided in favor of Newton by a committee appointed by the Royal Academy of Sciences, whose report was read on the 24th of April, 1713, [?] and published in the same year. This decision was partly just, and partly unjust. It was just, in so far as the two methods are identical, since Newton actually made his discovery before Leibnitz, while Leibnitz, not perhaps, altogether independently of Newton, made the same discovery again after Newton, and only preceded him in giving the method to the public. But the decision was unjust, in so far as the methods are not identical, the method of Leibnitz being more perfect and finished than that of Newton; in particular, the terminology adopted by Leibnitz is more pertinent to the subjects in hand and better adapted for use than Newton’s, while the most fruitful development of the fundamental idea of the method was discovered, not by Newton, but partly by Leibnitz, and partly by the brothers Jacob and Johann Bardouilli (with especial reference to transcendent functions), who adopted Leibnitz’ method…. To Leibnitz belongs the glory of an ingenious and relatively independent discovery, subsequent to that of Newton, but to which his own earlier investigations respecting series of differences were also influential in leading him, and which conducted him to a form of the Infinitesimal Calculus materially superior to that discovered by Newton. But in casting on Newton the suspicion of plagiarism, he conducted the priority controversy (which in itself, in the interest of historical truth, was necessary and unobjectionable), in the later period of that controversy, with means which scarcely admit of excuse.

Principia, 1687

  In the publication of this work the most acute and universally learned Mr. Edmund Halley not only assisted me with his pains in correcting the press and taking care of the schemes, but it was to his solicitations that its becoming public is owing; for when he had obtained of me my demonstrations of the figure of the celestial orbits, he continually pressed me to communicate the same to the “Royal Society,” who afterwards, by their kind encouragement and entreaties, engaged me to think of publishing them. But after I had begun to consider the inequalities of the lunar motions, and had entered upon some other things relating to the laws and measure of gravity, and other forces; and the figures that would be described by bodies attracted according to given laws; and the motion of several bodies moving among themselves; the motion of bodies in resisting mediums; the forces, densities, and motions, of mediums; the orbits of the comets, and such like; I deferred that publication till I had made a search into those matters, and could put forth the whole together. What relates to the lunar motions (being imperfect), I have put all together in the corollaries of Prop. 66, to avoid being obliged to propose and distinctly demonstrate the several things there contained in a method more prolix than the subject deserved, and interrupt the series of the several propositions. Some things, found out after the rest, I chose to insert in places less suitable, rather than change the number of the propositions and the citations. I heartily beg that what I have here done may be read with candour; and that the defects in a subject so difficult be not so much reprehended as kindly supplied, and investigated by new endeavours of my readers.

  Certainly to use Cartesian fictitious hypotheses at this time of day, after the principal parts of Sir Isaac Newton’s certain system have been made easy enough for the understanding of ordinary mathematicians, is like the continuing to eat old acorns after the discovery of new wheat, for the food of mankind.

  Isaac Newton, whom that innate modesty which usually attends on true genius had restrained from displaying his mighty talents, broke forth from his obscurity in the reign of James II. Then it was that he published his “Principia,” a work that occasioned the greatest revolution that was ever made in the world of science. This performance is an illustrious proof of the power of the human mind; it being the highest instance that can, or probably ever will be given of the exertion of it.

  The importance and generality of the discoveries, and the immense number of original and profound views which have been the germ of the most brilliant theories of the philosophers of this century, and all presented with much elegance, will ensure to the work on the “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” a pre-eminence above all the other productions of human genius.

  The Theory of the Moon, which crowns his immortal “Principia,” is a production of genius, sagacity, and invention almost superhuman. He ascends with admirable order from the easier to the more difficult problems, reducing them always to greater simplicity; he pursues his approximations with consummate address, and, seldom passing the clear bounds of geometry or entangling his demonstrations in the labyrinth of algebraical formulæ, he advances with elegance and apparently without effort to the disclosure of the most recondite truths.

  It is universally known, that Newton composed his wonderful work in a very hasty manner, merely selecting from a huge mass of papers such discoveries as would succeed each other as the connecting link of one vast chain, but without giving himself the trouble of explaining to the world the mode of fabricating those links. His comprehensive mind could, by the feeblest exertion of its powers, condense into one view many syllogisms of a proposition even heretofore uncontemplated. What difficulties, then, to him would seem his own discoveries? Surely none; and the modesty for which he is proverbially remarkable, gave him in his own estimation so little the advantage of the rest of created beings, that he deemed these difficulties as easy to others as to himself: the lamentable consequence of which humility has been, that he himself is scarcely comprehended at this day—a century from the birth of the “Principia.”

  The reader of the “Principia,” if he be a tolerably good mathematician, can follow the whole chain of demonstration by which the universality of gravitation is deduced from the fact, that it is a power acting inversely, as the square of the distance to the centre of attraction. Satisfying himself of the laws which regulate the motion of bodies in trajectories around given centres, he can convince himself of the sublime truths unfolded in that immortal work, and must yield his assent to this position, that the moon is deflected from the tangent of her orbit round the earth, by the same force by which the satellites of Jupiter are deflected from the tangent of theirs, the very same force which makes a stone unsupported fall to the ground. The reader of the “Mécanique Céleste,” if he be a still more learned mathematician, and versed in the modern improvements of the calculus which Newton discovered, can follow the chain of demonstration by which the wonderful provision made for the stability of the universe, is deduced from the fact, that the direction of all the planetary motions is the same—the eccentricity of their orbits small, and the angle formed by the plane of their orbits with the ecliptic acute. Satisfying himself of the laws which regulate the mutual actions of those bodies, he can convince himself of a truth yet more sublime than Newton’s discovery, though flowing from it, and must yield his assent to the marvellous position, that all the irregularities occasioned in the system of the universe, by the mutual attraction of its members, are periodical, and subject to an eternal law which prevents them from ever exceeding a stated amount, and secures through all time the balanced structure of a universe composed of bodies, whose mighty bulk and prodigious swiftness of motion mock the utmost efforts of the human imagination. All these truths are to the skilful mathematician as thoroughly known, and their evidence is as clear, as the simplest proposition in arithmetic is to common understandings. But how few are there who thus know and comprehend them! Of all the millions that thoroughly believe those truths, certainly not a thousand individuals are capable of following even any considerable portion of the demonstrations upon which they rest, and probably not a hundred now living have ever gone through the whole steps of those demonstrations.

  A work which will be memorable not only in the annals of one science or of one country, but which will form an epoch in the history of the world, and will ever be regarded as the brightest page in the records of human reason,—a work, may we not add, which would be read with delight in every planet of our system,—in every system of the universe. What a glorious privilege was it to have been the author of the “Principia!” There was but one earth upon whose form and tides and movements the philosopher could exercise his genius,—one moon, whose perturbations and inequalities and actions he could study.—one sun, whose controlling force and apparent motions he could calculate and determine,—one system of planets, whose mutual disturbances could tax his highest reason,—one system of comets, whose eccentric paths he could explore and rectify,—and one universe of stars, to whose binary and multiple combinations he could extend the law of terrestrial gravity. To have been the chosen sage summoned to the study of that earth, these systems, and that universe,—the favoured lawgiver to worlds unnumbered, the high-priest in the temple of boundless space,—was a privilege that could be granted but one member of the human family;—and to have executed the task was an achievement which in its magnitude can be measured only by the infinite in space, and in the duration of its triumphs by the infinite in time. That Sage—that Lawgiver—that High-priest was Newton.

  This immortal work not only laid the foundation of Physical Astronomy, it also carried the structure thereof very far towards its completion…. Taking the theory of gravitation in its universal acceptation, Newton, in a manner that looks as if he were divinely inspired, succeeded in demonstrating the chief inequalities of the moon and planetary bodies; in determining the figure of the earth—that it is not a perfect sphere, but an oblate spheroid; in explaining the precession of the equinoxes and the tides of the ocean. To such perfection have succeeding mathematicians brought his theory, that the most complicated movements and irregularities of the solar system have been satisfactorily accounted for and reduced to computation…. It adds to our admiration of the wonderful intellectual powers of Newton to know that the mathematical instrument he used was the ancient geometry.

  We hardly know whether to admire more the sublime discoveries at which Newton arrived, or the extraordinary character of the intellectual processes by which those discoveries were reached. Viewed from either standpoint, Newton’s “Principia” is incomparably the greatest work on science that has over yet been produced.

  Though belonging to an earlier period, the full meaning of Newton’s work has only been recognised in the course of our century. In fact the Newtonian philosophy can be said to have governed at least one entire section of the scientific research of the first half of this period: only in the second half of the period have we succeeded in defining more clearly the direction in which Newton’s views require to be extended or modified. Newton’s greatest achievements was to combine the purely mechanical laws which Galileo and Huygens had established with the purely physical relations which Kepler—following Copernicus and Tycho—had discovered in the planetary motions, and to abstract in so doing the general formula of universal attraction or gravitation…. Newton did not publish his “Principia” till 1687. The work, however, was conceived in the highest philosophic spirit, inasmuch as the enunciation of the so-called law of gravitation required the clear expression of the general laws of motion. In the first and second parts of the work the discoveries of Galileo and Huygens were absorbed, generalised, and restated in such terms as have up to our age been considered sufficient to form the basis for all purely mechanical reasoning. In the latter part the new rule, corresponding to Kepler’s empirical laws, is represented as a key to a system of the universe. The great outlines of this system are boldly drawn, and the working out of it is left as the great bequest of Newton to his successors.

General

  ’Tis given out at Oxford, that Mr. Newton has improved his doctrine of gravity so far, that he can answer all my lunar observations exceeding nearly; and that now there is little need of them, since all the inequalities of the moon’s motions may be discovered by the sole laws of gravitation without them. I said nothing of this, because I have moved him enough with what I have said about the comets: but to the honest man that told me of it, with some indignation I answered that he had been as many years upon this thing as I had been on the constellations and planets altogether; that he had made lunar tables once to answer his conceived laws,—but when he came to compare them with the heavens (that is, the moon’s observed places), he found he had mistook, and was forced to throw them all aside; that I had imparted above 200 of her observed places to him, which one would think should be sufficient to limit any theory by; and since he has altered and suited his theory till it fitted these observations, ’tis no wonder that it represents them: but still he is more beholden to them for it than he is to his speculations about gravity, which had misled him. Mr. Hobbs boasted that his laws were agreeable to those of Moses. Dr. Eachards tells him be doubted not of it; for being drawn from Moses’ works, and copied into his, he might be sure they would agree, except the laws of Moses were flown, which he was sure they were not.

  Newton’s harangue amounts to no more than that gravity is proportional to gravity.

  This I know, that he was much more solicitous in his inquiries into religion than into natural philosophy, and that the reason of his shewing the errors of Cartes’ philosophy was because he thought it was made on purpose to be the foundation of infidelity…. It’s hoped that the worthy and ingenious Mr. Conduitt will take care that they (his theological writings) be published, that the world may see that Sir Isaac Newton was as good a Christian as he was a mathematician and philosopher.

  The French philosophers at present chiefly follow Malebranche. They admire Sir Isaac Newton very much, but don’t yet allow of his great principle: it is his particular reasonings, experiments, and penetration, for which they so much admire him.

	Superior beings, when of late they saw
	A mortal man unfold all Nature’s law,
	Admir’d such wisdom in an earthly shape,
	And shew’d a Newton as we shew an Ape.

  And yet so incurable is the love of detraction, perhaps beyond what the charitable reader will easily believe that I have been assured, by more than one creditable person, how some of my enemies have industriously whispered about, that one Isaac Newton, an instrument-maker, formerly living near Leicester-Fields, and afterwards a workman in the Mint at the Tower, might possibly pretend to vie with me for fame in future times. The man, it seems, was knighted for making sun-dials better than others of his trade, and was thought to be a conjuror, because he knew how to draw lines and circles upon a slate, which nobody could understand. But adieu to all noble attempts for endless renown, if the ghost of an obscure mechanic shall be raised up to enter into competition with me, only for his skill in making pothooks and hangers with a pencil; which many thousand accomplished gentlemen and ladies can perform as well with pen and ink upon a piece of paper, and in a manner as little intelligible as those of Sir Isaac.

	God speaks, and the chaos at his voice subsides;
	In various orbs the mighty mass divides;
	At once they gravitate, they strive to fall,
	One center seeking which attracts them all.
	That soul of nature, that all moving spring,
	Lay long conceal’d, an unregarded thing;
	Till Newton’s compass moving through the space
	Measures all nature, and discovers place.
	The famous laws of motion are survey’d,
	Drawn back the veil, the heav’ns are all display’d.

  That wonder of our age and nation, Sir Isaac Newton.

  With respect to the primary planets, the attraction of the sun only is sufficient to oblige them to describe ellipses, but as they ought also to attract each other, there was some room to apprehend that the regularity of their motion might be thereby somewhat disturbed. We ought, however, to take Sir Isaac Newton’s word upon this head, since we shall presently see from what he has done, that there is no reason to be in pain upon this account. According to his observation, bodies attract each other in a direct proportion of the quantities of matter they contain, and the converse proportion of the squares of their distances, and in this proportion it is that the planets affect each other. Now if the Newtonian Philosophy be true, there is a certain method of knowing the quantity of matter in the planets, and consequently of calculating the force of their impressions; such a calculation being made, it appears that Mars, our Earth, Venus and Mercury, attract each other so little in proportion to the force with which they are attracted by the sun, that the disorder arising from thence must be altogether imperceptible in many revolutions; and hence there appears a wonderful agreement between the principles of this philosophy and the phænomena. But this agreement appears still more clearly in what happens with respect to Jupiter and Saturn; the quantity of matter in Jupiter is so great, that the calculation demonstrates the effects of its attraction upon Saturn ought to be very sensible in the time of their conjunction. Sir Isaac Newton predicted this to the Astronomers Flamsteed and Halley, but the former of these great men gave no credit at all to that prediction. However, the conjunction of those two planets approaching, this singular observation was made for the first time, and the consequence was, that the calculation was exactly verified. This procured the Newtonian Philosophy the approbation of so great an Astronomer as Flamsteed; indeed it would have been very difficult for him to have denied it.

  He saw that it was necessary to consult nature herself, to attend carefully to her manifest operations, and to extort her secrets from her by well chosen and repeated experiments. He would admit no objections against plain experience from metaphysical considerations, which, he saw, had often missed philosophers, and had seldom been of real use in their enquiries. He avoided presumption, he had the necessary patience as well as genius; and having kept steadily to the right path, he therefore succeeded. Experiments and observations, ’tis true, could not alone have carried him far in tracing the causes from their effects, and explaining the effects from their causes: a sublime geometry was his guide in this nice and difficult enquiry. This is the instrument, by which alone the machinery of a work, made with so much art could be unfolded; and therefore he sought to carry it to the greatest height. Nor is it easy to discern, whether he has shewn greater skill, and been more successful, in improving and perfecting the instrument, or in applying its use.

  In Newton this island may boast of having produced the greatest and rarest genius that ever rose for the ornament and instruction of the species. Cautious in admitting no principles but such as were founded on experiment; but resolute to adopt every such principle, however new or unusual: from modesty, ignorant of his superiority to the rest of mankind; and thence less careful to accommodate his reasonings to common apprehensions: more anxious to merit than acquire fame: he was, from these causes, long unknown to the world; but his reputation at last broke out with a lustre which scarce any writer, during his own lifetime, had ever before attained. While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time, the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity in which they ever did and ever will remain.

  In a Latin converse with the Père Boscovitch, at the house of Mrs. Cholmondeley, I heard him maintain the superiority of Sir Isaac Newton over all foreign philosophers, with a dignity and eloquence that surprised that learned foreigner.

  Both Newton and Bacon would have turned away in disgust from those who idolized them in the eighteenth century. In the case of the former, his strong attachment to Christianity and to the Bible was often pitied and deplored by his philosophic successors as the peculiar weakness of a mind naturally strong. In many of his expressions respecting the relations of the Diety to nature, or the starry heavens as the laboratory and reflex of the Divine glory, there is not merely a substratum of enthusiasm, but also of earnest conviction, bearing a peculiar impress, and proving that he had often deliberated on the supreme object of all contemplation, even though he was not actually a philosopher, and knew nothing of metaphysics.

  No one ever left knowledge in a state so different from that in which he found it. Men were instructed not only in new truths, but in new methods of discovering truth: they were made acquainted with the great principle which connects together the most distant regions of space, as well as the most remote periods of duration; and which was to lead to future discoveries, far beyond what the wisest or most sanguine could anticipate.

  All subsequent commentators are largely indebted to the labours of Sir Isaac Newton.

  This almost superhuman genius, whose powers and attainments at once make us proud of our common nature, and humble us with our disparity.

  We praise Newton’s clearness and steadiness. He was clear and steady, no doubt, whilst working out, by the help of an admirable geometry, the idea brought forth by another. Newton had his ether, and could not rest in—he could not conceive—the idea of law. He thought it a physical thing after all. As for his chronology, I believe those who are most competent to judge, rely on it less and less every day. His lucubrations on Daniel and the Revelations seem to me little less than mere raving.

  Newton was a great man, but you must excuse me if I think that it would take many Newtons to make one Milton.

  The doctrine of universal gravitation, like other great steps in science, required a certain time to make its way into men’s minds; and had to be confirmed, illustrated, and completed, by the labors of succeeding philosophers. As the discovery itself was great beyond former example, the features of the natural sequel to the discovery were also on a gigantic scale; and many vast and laborious trains of research, each of which might, in itself, be considered as forming a wide science, and several of which have occupied many profound and zealous inquirers from that time to our own day, come before us as parts only of the verification of Newton’s Theory. Almost everything that has been done, and is doing, in astronomy, falls inevitably under this description; and it is only when the astronomer travels to the very limits of his vast field of labor, that he falls in with phenomena which do not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Newtonian legislation.

  Newton’s religious writings are distinguished by their absolute freedom from prejudice. Everywhere, throughout them, there glows the genuine nobleness of soul. To his whole life, indeed, we may here fitly extend the same observation. He was most richly imbued with the very spirit of the Scriptures which he so delighted to study and to meditate upon. His was a piety, so fervent, so sincere and practical, that it rose up like a holy incense from every thought and act. His a benevolence that not only willed, but endeavoured the best for all. His a philanthropy that held in the embracings of its love every brother-man. His a toleration of the largest and the truest; condemning persecution in every, even its mildest, form; and kindly encouraging each striving after excellence:—a toleration that came not of indifference—for the immoral and impious met with their quick rebuke—but a toleration that came of the wise humbleness and the Christian charity, which see, in the nothingness of self and the almightiness of TRUTH, no praise for the ablest, and no blame for the feeblest in their strugglings upwards to light and life.

  I cannot but fancy the shade of Newton blushing to reflect that, among the many things which he professed to know not, poetry was omitted, of which he knew nothing. Great as he was, he indeed saw nothing in the face of nature but its lines and colors; not the lines and colors of passion and sentiment included, but only squares and their distances, and the anatomy of the rainbow. He thought the earth a glorious planet; he knew it better than any one else, in its connection with other planets; and yet half the beauty of them all, that which sympathy bestows and imagination colors, was to him a blank. He took space to be the sensorium of the Deity, (so noble a fancy could be struck out of the involuntary encounter between his intense sense of a mystery and the imagination he despised!) and yet this very fancy was but an escape from the horror of a vacuum, and a substitution of the mere consciousness of existence for the thoughts and images with which a poet would have accompanied it. He imagined the form of the house, and the presence of the builder; but the life and the variety, the paintings, the imagery, and the music—the loves and the joys, the whole riches of the place, the whole riches in the distance, the creations heaped upon creation, and the particular as well as aggregate consciousness of all this in the great mind of whose presence he was conscious—to all this his want of imagination rendered him insensible. The “Fairy Queen” was to him a trifle; the dreams of Shakspeare “ingenious nonsense.” But courts were something, and so were the fashions there. When the name of the Deity was mentioned, he took off his hat!

  In Isaac Newton two kinds of intellectual power, which have little in common, and which are not often found together in a very high degree of vigour, but which nevertheless are equally necessary in the most sublime departments of physics, were united as they have never been united before or since. There may have been minds as happily constituted as his for the cultivation of pure mathematical science; there may have been minds as happily constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental; but in no other mind have the demonstrative faculty and the inductive faculty coexisted in such supreme excellence and perfect harmony. Perhaps in the days of Scotists and Thomists even his intellect might have run to waste, as many intellects ran to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily the spirit of the age on which his lot was cast, gave the right direction to his mind; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on the spirit of the age.

  They who have overlooked or disregarded the proofs of the connexion between what Bacon enjoined and Boyle performed, are not likely to have recognized any traces of the lights held out by the former, in the philosophy of Newton. Yet it appears undeniable that the latter was guided by principles which Bacon alone had taught; and that his philosophy derives an imperishable character from its rigid adherence to them.

  We think of Euclid as of fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe.

  A genius of the very highest order, a type of genius in science, if ever there was one.

  Newton’s merit consisted in this, that he applied the laws of dynamics to the movements of the celestial bodies, and insisted that scientific theories must be substantiated by the agreement of observations with calculations.

  Our national reverence for Newton’s scientific achievements has deterred us from laughing at his dabblings in the interpretation of prophecy; and, indeed, sighs rather than smiles should greet the melancholy spectacle of a noble intellect running to waste in puzzling over meaningless riddles.

  In the possession of five healthy senses he regarded himself as the centre of all phenomena, and asserted that what was discernible to the unassisted human eye was the real standard for everything. This was the reason why he found no pleasure in astronomy, for which he needed a telescope, or in microscopic investigations. He even cherished a prejudice against Newton from the one circumstance that he operated with a prism instead of making a sufficient instrument of his healthy human eye.

  That Kant was considerably influenced by Locke is evident from his numerous references to him; but in his earlier years, at least, he was much more indebted to Newton. This is not only seen in his work on cosmogony, but also in his first metaphysical dissertation, which aims to show that metaphysic is not in conflict with the natural philosophy of Newton. Locke’s influence began later. While it may be impossible to trace the direct influence of Newton on the “Kritik,” indirectly it was great.

  The greatest of natural philosophers.

  Sir Isaac Newton’s great discovery was not of gravitation, but of the Unity which furnishes the proof of God’s existence.

  In Locke’s famous countryman, Isaac Newton, the modern investigation of nature attains the level toward which it has striven, at first by wishes and demands, gradually, also, in knowledge and achievement, since the end of the mediæval period…. Newton resembles Boyle in uniting profound piety with the rigor of scientific thought. He finds the most certain proof for the existence of an intelligent creator in the wonderful arrangement of the world-machine, which does not need after-adjustment at the hands of its creator, and whose adaption he praises as enthusiastically as he unconditionally rejects the mingling of teleological considerations in the explanation of physical phenomena.

  Newton has with regard to our subject two great merits. Firstly, he has greatly enlarged the horizon of mechanical physics through the discovery of universal gravitation. Further, he has also completed the enunciation of the principles of mechanics as we now accept them. After him an essentially new principle has not been established. What after him has been done in mechanics refers to the deductive, formal, and mathematical development of mechanics on the ground of Newton’s principles…. Newton’s principles are sufficient without the introduction of any new principle to clear up every mechanical problem which may present itself, be it one of statics or dynamics. If difficulties present themselves, they are always only mathematical, formal, not fundamental.

  Newton has indeed but little direct claim to rank among the masters of English prose. With the exception of a few letters and theological pamphlets, his writings are all in Latin, academic instincts teaching him the inestimable value of that language as an instrument of definite and precise statement. Nor are the subjects such as to leave much room for beauty of form in their exposition. Order, lucidity, and a reverence for the syllogism—you can expect no more from a mathematician. And those same virtues of clear and cogent reasoning, are the chief qualities which Newton carries with him when he ventures into his mother tongue, and beyond the sphere of physics. Indirectly, however, he must have had a considerable influence upon the subsequent course of literature. The impulse of the scientific spirit is among the principal factors to be taken account of in examining the problem of the eighteenth century mind; and no one had a greater share in the propagation of this impulse than Newton.

  An estimate of his genius is impossible. “Sibi gratulentur mortales tale tantunque extitisse Humani generis Decus” are the words on his monument at Westminster, while on Roubilica’s statue in Trinity College chapel the inscription is “Newton qui genus humanum ingenio superavit.” All who have written of him use words of the highest admiration. On a table in the room in which Newton was born at Woolsthrop manorhouse is inscribed the celebrated epitaph written by Pope:

	Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
	God said, “Let Newton be,” and all was light.

Laplace speaks of the causes “which will always assure to the ‘Principia’ a pre-eminence above all other productions of the human intellect.” Voltaire, who was present at Newton’s funeral, and was profoundly impressed by the just honours paid to his memory by “the chief men of the nation,” always spoke of the philosopher with reverence—“if all the geniuses of the universe assembled, he should lead the band.”

  Had Newton done nothing beyond making his wonderful discoveries in light, his fame would have gone down to posterity as one of the greatest of Nature’s interpreters…. Though Newton lived long enough to receive the honour that his astonishing discoveries so justly merited, and though for many years of his life his renown was much greater than that of any of his contemporaries, yet it is not too much to say that, in the years which have since elapsed, Newton’s fame has been ever steadily advancing, so that it never stood higher than it does at this moment. We hardly know whether to admire more the sublime discoveries at which he arrived, or the extraordinary character of the intellectual processes by which those discoveries were reached. Viewed from either standpoint, Newton’s “Principia” is incomparably the greatest work on science that has ever yet been produced.

  His reputation spread more slowly than that of the great High Chancellor; but it rests on a surer foundation, which baffles every attempt to shake it, and will outlast all coming changes of thought. The beginnings of modern scientific thought are thus to be found in this country. Lord Bacon foretold prophetically the great change which the new philosophy was destined to work. Newton more patiently drew up the first simple rules and gave the first brilliant application. More than the unfinished and wearisome pages of Bacon’s “Novum Organum” does the “Principia” deserve to be placed on a line with Aristotle and Euclid as a model work of scientific inquiry.

  It has been said that the history of Sir Isaac Newton is also the history of science; yet the character of his life and the work does not entirely exclude him from the category of men of letters…. Milton and Dante dealt with the spiritual order of creation, Sir Isaac Newton with the material; yet to those who perceive an almost mystical significance in numbers,—to whom mathematics are, in a sense, gateways to the unseen,—the author of the “Principia” and of the “Treatise on Optics” will seem scarcely less a teacher than the poets.