42 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



orated and given in perfection its having, however new, stood the test of 

 time, and survived, nay gained by, the most rigorous scrutiny can be predi- 

 cated of this system alone, at least in the same degree. That the calculus, 

 and those parts of dynamics which are purely mathematical, should thus 

 endure forever is a matter of course. But his system of the universe rests 

 partly upon contingent truths, and might have yielded to new experiments 

 and more extended observation. Nay, at times it has been thought to fail, 

 and further investigation was deemed requisite to ascertain if any error had 

 been introduced if any circumstance had escaped the notice of the great 

 founder. The most memorable instance of this kind is the discrepancy sup- 

 posed to have been found between the theory and the fact in the motion of 

 the lunar apsides, which about the middle of the last century occupied the 

 three first analysts of the age. The error was discovered by themselves to 

 have been their own in the process of their investigation ; and this, like all 

 the other doubts that were ever momentarily entertained, only led in each 

 instance to new and more brilliant triumphs of the system. The prodigious 

 superiority in this cardinal point of the Newtonian to other discoveries 

 appears manifest upon examining almost any of the chapters in the history 

 of science. Successive improvements have, by extending our views, con- 

 stantly displaced the system that appeared firmly established. To take a 

 familiar instance how little remains of Lavoisier's doctrine of combustion 

 and acidification, except the negative positions, the subversion of the system 

 of Stahl ! The substance having most eminently the properties of an acid 

 (chlorine) is found to have no oxygen at all, while many substances abound- 

 ing in oxygen, including alkalis themselves, have no acid property whatever; 

 and without the access of oxygenous or of any other gas, heat and flame are 

 produced in excess. The docrines of free trade had not long been promul- 

 gated by Smith before Bentham demonstrated that his exception of usury 

 was groundless ; and his theory has been repeatedly proved erroneous on 

 colonial establishments, as well as his exception to it on the navigation laws ; 

 and the imperfection of his views on the nature of rent is undeniable, as well 

 as on the principle of population. In these and such instances as these it 

 would not be easy to find in the original doctrines the means of correcting 

 subsequent errors, or the germs of extended discovery. But even if philoso- 

 phers finally, adopt the undulatory theory of light instead of the atomic, it 

 must be borne in mind that Newton gave the first elements of it by the well- 

 known proposition in the eighth section of the Second Book of the " Prin- 

 cipia," the scholium to that section also indicating his expectation that it 

 * would be applied to optical science; while M. Biot has shown how the doc- 

 trine of fits of reflection and transmission tallies with polarization, if not 

 with undulation also. But the most marvellous attribute of Newton's dis- 

 coveries is that in which they stand out prominent among all the other feats 

 of scientific research, stamped with the peculiarity of his intellectual charac- 

 ter; they were (their great author lived before his age) anticipating in part 

 what was long after wholly accomplished, and thus unfolding some things 

 which at the time could be but imperfectly, others not at all comprehended, 

 and not rarely pointing out the path and affording the means of treading it, 

 to the ascertainment of truths then veiled in darkness. He not only enlarged 

 the actual dominion of knowledge, penetrating to regions never before ex- 

 plored, and taking with a firm hand undisputed possession ; but he showed 

 how the bounds of the visible horizon might be yet further extended, and 

 enabled his successors to occupy what he could only descry; as the illustrious 



