Mr. Newton

“ How few ever reach the shore even, much less find "a smoother pebble or a prettier shell!"
Newton had now resided about two years at Kensington; and the air which he enjoyed there, and the state of absolute rest, proved of great benefit to him. Nevertheless he would occasionally go to town. And on Tuesday, the 28th of February, 1727, he proceeded to London, for the purpose of presiding at a meeting of the Royal Society. At this time his health was considered, by Mr. Conduit, better than it had been for many years. ”

“ How she was awakened from it, the reader has been already informed.
"It's rather awkward, Newton," said Mr John Forster, about ten days afterwards. "I cannot do without your mother, that's certain; but what am I to do with your father? Humph! Well, she must take charge of him as well as Amber. She must teach him—"
"Teach him what, sir?" replied Newton, laughing.
"Teach him what? Why, to leave my watch and spectacles alone. I dare not lay them down for a moment." ”

“ In 1724 he wrote to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, offering to contribute twenty pounds yearly toward the salary of Mr. Maclaurin, provided he accepted the assistant Professorship of Mathematics in the University of that place. Not only in the cause of ingenuity and learning, but in that of religion—in relieving the poor and assisting his relations, Newton annually expended large sums. He was generous and charitable almost to a fault. Those, he would often remark, who gave away nothing till they died, never gave at all. His wealth had become considerable by a prudent economy ”

“ The appointment of Newton to the mastership of the mint must have been peculiarly gratifying to the Royal Society, and it was probably from a feeling of gratitude to Mr. Montague, as much as from a regard for his talents, that this able statesman was elected president of that learned body on the 30th November, 1695. This office he held for three years, and on the 30th January, 1697, Newton had the satisfaction of addressing to him his solution of the celebrated problems proposed by John Bernouilli. ”

“ Aston to inquire after one Borry in Holland, who always went clothed in green, and who was said to possess valuable secrets; but Mr. Law has weakened the force of his own testimony, when271 he asserts that Newton borrowed the doctrine of attraction from Behmen’s first three propositions of eternal nature.
On the 7th December, 1675, Sir Isaac Newton communicated to the Royal Society a paper entitled An hypothesis explaining properties of light, in which he, for the first time, introduces his opinions respecting ether, and employs them to explain the nature of light, and the cause of gravity. ”

“ In this manner he acquired a knowledge of the physical truths in the Principia, and became a firm believer in the discoveries which it contained. In the same manner he studied the treatise on Optics, and made himself master of every part of it which was not mathematical.52 From a manuscript of Sir Isaac Newton’s, entitled “A demonstration that the planets, by their gravity towards the sun, may move in ellipses,53 found among the papers of Mr. ”

“ Newton, occupied in grinding Hyperbolical Lenses—His first Experiments with the Prism made in 1666—He discovers the Composition of White Light, and the different Refrangibility of the Rays which compose it—Abandons his Attempts to improve Refracting Telescopes and resolves to attempt the Construction of Reflecting ones—He quits Cambridge on account of the Plague—Constructs two Reflecting Telescopes in 1668, the first ever executed—One of them examined by the Royal Society, and shown to the King—He constructs a Telescope with Glass Specula—Recent History of the Reflecting Telescope—Mr. ”

“ As a matter of fact, it is little short of a miracle, in view of the insignificance of our mathematical ability, that theoretical physics should have been possible at all. Had our solar system contained two suns such as are present in the double-star systems, or had one of the planets been comparable in size to the sun, it is safe to say that Newton, in spite of his genius, would never have discovered his law of gravitation ”

“ And so it would be, if truths, like the sun, rose by their own proper motion, without human effort; but not otherwise. I believe that if Newton had not lived, the world must have waited for the Newtonian philosophy until there had been another Newton, or his equivalent. No ordinary man, and no succession of ordinary men, could have achieved it. I will not go the length of saying that what Newton did in a single life, might not have been done in successive steps by some of those who followed him, each singly inferior to him in genius. ”

“ One day, as Newton sat musing in his garden at his retired country home, an apple fell from a tree to the ground. A great idea at once arose in his mind, and he conceived the plan of the universe and of the law of gravitation, as it is called. He was the first to discover that famous law. He showed that the heavier body always attracts the lighter; that as the apple falls to the earth, so the earth is drawn toward the sun; that all the planets feel the law of gravitation, and that all the universe seems to obey one will. Newton soon became the most famous of living philosophers. ”

“ Monsieur Roger continued:
"By much reflection, by hard work and calculation, Newton made an admirable discovery,—that of universal attraction. Yes, he discovered that all bodies, different though they may be, attract each other: they draw towards each other; the bodies which occupy the celestial spaces,—planets and suns,—as well as the bodies which are found upon our earth. The force which attracts bodies towards the earth, which made this stone fall, as Newton's apple fell, has received the name of weight. ”

“ Six years later a new determination of the size of the earth gave him a new basis for calculation, and, in an excitement so great that he could hardly see his figures, Newton found that the fall of a stone to the earth and the sweep of the moon in her orbit were due to the same cause. The mechanism by means of which the force is exerted remained unrevealed to Newton, and has baffled all inquirers since his day, but the discovery that all the movements of the heavens could be described by one simple physical law, represents the greatest achievement in the history of science. ”

“ Were we to judge of the qualities of his mind from the early age at which he made his principal discoveries, and from the rapidity of their succession, we should be led to ascribe to him that quickness of penetration, and that exuberance of invention, which is more characteristic of poetical than of philosophical genius. But we must recollect that Newton was placed in the most favourable circumstances for the development of his powers. The flower of his youth and the vigour of his manhood were entirely devoted to science. ”

“ In our moon we have a neighbour which has long been in the habit of answering truthfully questions addressed to her by astronomers. Of old, she told Newton about gravitation, and when he doubted, and urged opposing evidence offered—as men in his time supposed—by the earth, she set him on the right track, so that when in due time the evidence offered by the earth was corrected, Newton was prepared at once to accept and propound the noble theory which rendered his name illustrious. ”

“ Study, unbroken, persevering and profound carried on its informing and disciplining work upon a genius, natively the greatest, and rendered freest in its movements, and clearest in its vision, through the untrammelling and enlightening power of religion. And, in this happy concurrence, are to be sought the elements of those amazing abilities, which, grasping, with equal facility, the minute and the stupendous, brought these successively to light, and caused science to make them her own.
In 1667, Newton was made a Junior Fellow ”

“ Judging from what we know of physical laws, we may expect the which belongs to it to be distinguished by having simple mathematical properties. Physics, this time as a physics of fields, is again pursuing the object of reducing the totality of natural phenomena to a single physical law: it was believed that this goal was almost within reach once before when Newton’s Principia, founded on the physics of mechanical point-masses, was celebrating its triumphs. But the treasures of knowledge are not like ripe fruits that may be plucked from a tree. ”

“ Verifying its truth by the motions of terrestrial bodies, then by those of the moon and other secondary orbs, he finally embraced, in one mighty generalization, the entire Solar System—all the movements of all its bodies—planets, satellites and comets—explaining and harmonizing the many diverse and theretofore inexplicable phenomena.
Guided by the genius of Newton, we see sphere bound to sphere, body to body, particle to particle, atom to mass, the minutest part to the stupendous whole—each to each, each to all, and all to each—in the mysterious bonds of a ceaseless, reciprocal influence. ”

“ It has sometimes happened, whether from the harmonious relations to each other of every department of science, or from rare felicity of individual genius, that the most extraordinary intellectual versatility has been manifested by the same person. Although Newton's transcendent talent did not blaze out in childhood, yet as a boy he discovered great aptitude for mechanical contrivance. His water-clock, self-moving vehicle, and mill, were the wonder of the village ”

“ These little globes, so fragile that they disappear in a breath, hardly seem worthy of the attention of a thinker, and still less the examination of a philosopher; but it is nevertheless true that Newton made experiments on the colours shown on the surface of these apparently insignificant objects which ended in the most brilliant discoveries, just as on seeing an apple fall he began a train of thought which only terminated in the enunciation of the hypothesis of the earth's power of gravity. ”

“ In Physics, Newton was his favourite author. Of HIM he ever spoke with a species of respect bordering upon veneration. He considered him as one of those few great leaders in science whose discoveries and services can never be forgotten: whose fame, instead of diminishing, is destined to be augmented, with the progress of time. I had many opportunities of being witness to the exalted opinion which he entertained of the immortal British philosopher. ”

“ It must be remembered that the successors of Newton were very apt to declare that Newton had demonstrated attraction as a physical cause: he had taken reasonable pains to show that he did not pretend to this. If any one had said to Newton, I hold that every particle of matter is a responsible being of vast intellect, ordered by the Creator to move as it would do if every other particle attracted it, and gifted with power to make its way in true accordance with that law, as easily as a lady picks her way across the street ”

“ This part of mechanics was cultivated by the ancients in the five powers which relate to manual arts, who considered gravity (it not being a manual power) , no otherwise than as it moved weights by those powers. Our design not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject not manual but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as the mathematical principles if philosophy ”

“ The history of these problems affords, by direct comparison, a striking illustration of Newton's vast superiority of mind. That amazing concentration and grasp of intellect, of which we have spoken, enabled him to master speedily, and, as it were, by a single effort, those things, for the achievement of which, the many would essay utterly in vain, and the very, very few attain only after long and renewed striving. And yet, with a modesty as unparalleled as his power, he attributed his successes, not to any extraordinary sagacity, but solely to industry and patient thought. ”

“ Both Newton and Einstein were led to their theory of gravitation by profound studies of the mathematics of motion, but as Newton’s conception of motion differed from Einstein’s, and as, moreover, important discoveries into the nature of matter and the relationship of motion to matter were made subsequent to Newton’s time, we need not wonder that the two theories show divergence; that, as we shall see, Newton’s is probably but an approximation of the truth. If we [17] confine our attention to our own solar system, the deviation from Newton’s law is, as a rule, so small as to be negligible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The demonstrations in the Principia are expressed in the language of classical geometry, and, though unnecessarily concise and difficult, their correctness is unimpeachable. That Newton could carry his calculations so far with the limited mathematics then at his command is not the least wonderful part of the performance, but it is the prerogative of genius to get great results with but scanty equipment. ”