SIR ISAAC NEWTON

(1642-1727)

T HAS been said that the history of Sir Isaac Newton is also the history of science; yet the character of his life and work does not entirely exclude him from the category of men of letters. While his great book the 'Principia' is written in Latin and treats of mathematics, its tremendous scope and magnificent revelations entitle it to be placed without incongruity among those works which, like 'Paradise Lost' or the 'Divine Comedy,' have widened men's outlook into the universe. 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.

The life of Sir Isaac Newton, in its harmony, in the smoothness of its course, in the perfection of its development, seems singularly expressive of the science to which it was dedicated. From the time when as a village boy he made water-wheels and kite-lanterns for his companions, to the hour when full of years and honors he passed away, the life of Newton was a series of orderly progresses towards a fixed goal.

He was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, on December 25th, 1642. His father, who had died before his birth, had been lord and farmer of the little manor of Woolsthorpe. Newton's mother designed that he should perform the same office, removing him from Grantham School for this purpose when he was about fifteen years old. Newton soon showed that the yeoman's life was not congenial to him. He would read a book under a hedge, or construct a water-wheel for the meadow brook, while the sheep strayed and the cattle were treading down the corn. He was therefore sent back to the school, where he had already earned a reputation for industry. If the legend be true, his first stimulus to study was a well-directed kick in the stomach delivered by the boy next above him in class. It was characteristic of his gentle nature that the only path of revenge open to him was through his superior intellect. From Grantham School, Newton went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in the year 1660. His mathematical genius soon manifested itself. About the year 1663 he

The

invented the formula known as the Binomial Theorem, by which he afterwards established his method of fluxions. He had been admitted to Cambridge as a subsizar. He became a scholar in 1664, and in 1665 he took his degree as Bachelor of Arts. In 1667 he was made Junior Fellow, and in 1668 he took his Master of Arts degree, and was appointed to a Senior Fellowship. In 1669 he became Lucasian professor of mathematics. In the eight years between Newton's admission to the University and his promotion to this chair, the germs of his great discoveries had come into existence. During his long after life they were but brought to a perfect development. keystone of the 'Principia,' the principle of Universal Gravitation,that every particle of matter is attracted by or gravitates to every other particle of matter with a force inversely proportional to the squares of their distances,—this principle had suggested itself to Newton as early as 1666; but the great work in which it was embodied was not presented to the Royal Society until 1687. The Treatise on Optics' was based on Newton's Cambridge experiments with the prism and with the telescope, which had led to his being made a member of the Royal Society in 1672. He was obliged to contend with the most noted scientists of his time for the principle of this book, that light is not homogeneous but consists of rays, some of which are more refrangible than others. His triumph was as much a matter of course as the workings of natural law. His contemporaries accepted his conclusions when they realized that he was more deeply in the secret of the universe than any man had ever been.

The honors accorded to him were numerous. In 1688 he was elected by his university to the Convention Parliament. In 1696 he was made Warden, and in 1699 Master of the Mint. In 1701 he was again returned to Parliament. He was made president of the Royal Society in 1703. In 1705 he was knighted by Queen Anne. Upon his death in 1727, he was buried in Westminster Abbey in the state befitting his princely endowments.

The words of Newton shortly before his death, that he seemed to himself like a boy playing on the sea-shore, diverting himself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him," are significant of his habitual humility and reverence. His soul was childlike in the presence of mysteries to which he held one key. His bequests to posterity are not only his stupendous discoveries, but the example of the scientific temper of mind which is positive rather than negative, and which seeks a spiritual order behind the veil of

matter.

LETTER TO FRANCIS ASTOR IN 1669

INCE in your letter you give me so much liberty of spending

S my judgment about what may be to your advantage in

traveling, I shall do it more freely than perhaps otherwise would have been decent. First, then, I will lay down some general rules, most of which, I believe, you have considered already: but if any of them be new to you, they may excuse the rest; if none at all, yet is my punishment more in writing than yours in reading.

When you come into any fresh company:— - 1. Observe their humors. 2. Suit your own carriage thereto, by which insinuation you will make their converse more free and open. 3. Let your discourse be more in queries and doubtings than peremptory assertions or disputings; it being the design of travelers to learn, not to teach. Besides it will persuade your acquaintance that you have the greater esteem of them, and so make them more ready to communicate what they know to you; whereas nothing sooner occasions disrespect and quarrels than peremptoriness. You will find little or no advantage in seeming wiser or much more ignorant than your company. 4. Seldom discommend anything though never so bad, or do it but moderately, lest you be unexpectedly forced to an unhandsome retraction. It is safer to commend anything more than it deserves, than to discommend a thing so much as it deserves; for commendations meet not so often with oppositions, or at least are not usually so ill resented by men that think otherwise, as discommendations: and you will insinuate into men's favor by nothing sooner than seeming to approve and commend what they like; but beware of doing it by comparison. 5. If you be affronted, it is better, in a foreign country, to pass it by in silence and with a jest, though with some dishonor, than to endeavor revenge: for in the first case, your credit's ne'er the worse when you return into England, or come into other company that have not heard of the quarrel; but in the second case, you may bear the marks of the quarrel while you live, if you outlive it at all. But if you find yourself unavoidably engaged, 'tis best I think, if you can command your passion and language, to keep them pretty evenly at some certain moderate pitch; not much heightening them to exasperate your adversary, or provoke his friends, nor letting them grow overmuch dejected to make him insult. In a word, if you can

keep reason above passion, that and watchfulness will be your best defendants. To which purpose you may consider, that though such excuses as this-He provoked me so much I could not forbear-may pass among friends, yet amongst strangers they are insignificant, and only argue a traveler's weakness.

To these I may add some general heads for inquiries or observations, such as at present I can think on. As, 1. To observe the policies, wealth, and State affairs of nations, so far as a solitary traveler may conveniently do. 2. Their impositions upon all sorts of people, trades, or commodities, that are remarkable. 3. Their laws and customs, how far they differ from ours 4. Their trades and arts, wherein they excel or come short of us in England. 5. Such fortifications as you shall meet with, their fashion, strength, and advantages for defense, and other such military affairs as are considerable. 6. The power and respect belonging to their degrees of nobility or magistracy. 7. It will not be time misspent to make a catalogue of the names and excellencies of those men that are most wise, learned, or esteemed in any nation. 8. Observe the mechanism and manner of guiding ships. 9. Observe the products of nature in several places, especially in mines, with the circumstances of mining and of extracting metals or minerals out of their ore, and of refining them; and if you meet with any transmutations out of their own species into another (as out of iron into copper, out of any metal into quicksilver, out of one salt into another, or into an insipid body, etc.), those above all will be worth your noting, being the most luciferous, and many times lucriferous experiments too, in philosophy. 10. The prices of diet and other things. 11. And the staple commodities of places.

These generals (such as at present I could think of), if they will serve for nothing else, yet they may assist you in drawing up a model to regulate your travels by. As for particulars, these that follow are all that I can now think of;- viz., 1. Whether at Schemnitium in Hungary (where there are mines of gold, copper, iron, vitriol, antimony, etc.) they change iron into coppe I by dissolving it in a vitriolate water, which they find in cavities of rocks in the mines, and then melting the slimy solution in a strong fire, which in the cooling proves copper. The like is said to be done in other places which I cannot now remember; perhaps too it may be done in Italy. For about twenty or thirty years agone there was a certain vitriol came from thence (called

Roman vitriol), but of a nobler virtue than that which is now called by that name; which vitriol is not now to be gotten, because perhaps they make a greater gain by some such trick as turning iron into copper with it than by selling it. 2. Whether in Hungary, Sclavonia, Bohemia, near the town Eila, or at the mountains of Bohemia near Silesia, there be rivers whose waters are impregnated with gold; perhaps, the gold being dissolved by some corrosive water like aqua regis, and the solution carried along with the stream that runs through the mines. And whether the practice of laying mercury in the rivers, till it be tinged with gold, and then straining the mercury through leather, that the gold may stay behind, be a secret yet, or openly practiced. 3. There is newly contrived, in Holland, a mill to grind glasses plane withal, and I think polishing them too; perhaps it will be worth the while to see it. 4. There is in Holland one Borry, who some years since was imprisoned by the Pope, to have extorted from him secrets (as I am told) of great worth, both as to medicine and profit; but he escaped into Holland, where they have granted him a guard. I think he usually goes clothed in green. Pray inquire what you can of him, and whether his ingenuity be any profit to the Dutch. You may inform yourself whether the Dutch have any tricks to keep their ships from being all worm-eaten in their voyages to the Indies; whether pendulum clocks do any service in finding out the longitude, etc.

I am very weary, and shall not stay to part with a long compliment; only I wish you a good journey, and God be with you.

THIS

FROM MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES'

Book iii. of the Principia'

HIS most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another.