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Updated: April 30, 2025
Lagrange and Laplace shall apply the Newtonian theory to determine the secular inequalities of celestial motion; they shall weigh absolutely the amount of matter in the planets; they shall show how far their orbits deviate from circles; and they shall enumerate the cycles of changes detected in the circuit of the moon.
To whichever of these six colours one exposes the eye, an after-image always appears of its contrast colour, forming with it a pair of opposites. We must here briefly recall how this phenomenon is generally explained on Newtonian lines. The starting-point is the assumption that the eye becomes fatigued by gazing at the colour and gradually becomes insensitive to it.
The most striking example which the history of science presents, of the explanation of laws of causation and other uniformities of sequence among special phenomena, by resolving them into laws of greater simplicity and generality, is the great Newtonian generalization; respecting which typical instance, so much having already been said, it is sufficient to call attention to the great number and variety of the special observed uniformities, which are in this case accounted for, either as particular cases, or as consequences, of one very simple law of universal nature.
Previously to Liebig’s investigations, the property in question had only been observed in a few special cases of chemical action; but when his deductive reasonings have established that innumerable effects produced upon weak compounds, by substances none of whose known peculiarities would account for their having such a power, might be explained by considering the supposed special property to exist in all those cases, these numerous generalizations on separate substances are brought together into one law of chemical action in general: the peculiarities of the various substances being, in fact, eliminated, just as the Newtonian deduction eliminated from the instances of terrestrial gravity the circumstance of proximity to the earth.
Yet DESCARTES, to whose sublime errors the world is indebted for the Newtonian system, although before him the soul had been considered spiritual, was the first who established that, "that which thinks ought to be distinguished from matter;" from whence he concludes rather hastily, that the soul, or that which thinks in man, is a spirit; or a simple indivisible substance.
"In this retreat at Cirey, varied with flying visits to Paris, and kept awake by multifarious Correspondences, the quantity of Literature done by the two was great and miscellaneous. By Madame, chiefly in the region of the pure sciences, in Newtonian Dissertations, competitions for Prizes, and the like: really sound and ingenious Pieces, entirely forgotten long since.
Darwin verbally recognises a Creator, although without assigning to Him any share in creation, even so Kant, when more than a century ago undertaking, in his 'General Natural History and Theory of the Celestial Bodies, to account for the constitution and mechanical origin of the universe on Newtonian principles, spoke of the elements as deriving their essential qualities from the 'eternal thought of the Divine Intelligence, without, however, crediting the said Intelligence with having interposed in order to carry out His thoughts.
Yet, as has been already pointed out, it was the knowledge of these marvellously simple relations between the planetary orbits that laid the foundation for the Newtonian law of universal gravitation. Contemporary judgment could not, of course, anticipate this culmination of a later generation.
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.
Hodge declared that the consistent Darwinian must be an atheist. For that matter, Shelley defended himself by saying that, of course, "the consistent Newtonian must necessarily be an atheist." But fifty years have made great changes in the doctrine of evolution, and the old scare has been over for some time.
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