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Newton himself was a man of absolutely unsurpassed genius for 

 Science, though several points in his life are at least questionable. 

 He was engaged in a good many serious quarrels ; and from his 

 early life constantly made discoveries which he did not publish 

 to the world. De Morgan justly said that first Newton made a 

 discovery, and next the world had to discover that Newton had 

 discovered it ; and the latter part of the process was the longer 

 and more difficult. Most fortunately Newton had a friend in 

 Halley, who with singular tact recognised and fulfilled the task 

 of preventing Newton's genius from being wasted, at least, till 

 the publication of his mcunvm opus. The stupendous results 

 which Newton achieved were owing to his possession of a mind 

 equally adapted for induction and deduction, and to his faculty 

 of (fuesmui correct results and then spending years of patient 

 toil in irrefragably proving his guesses. Buckle says that only 

 Aristotle and Newton have shown themselves able to reason with 

 absolute accuracy both inductively and deductively ; and else- 

 where, that no poet, except Dante and Shakespeare, possessed so 

 soaring and audacious an imagination as Sir Isaac Newton. 



Newton was born on Christmas Day, 1642. His youth and 

 early manhood were passed in his native Lincolnshire and at 

 Cambridge University. What was the state of Science then ? 

 It was a very great period, politically, for then occurred the Civil 

 War, the execution of the King, the establishment of a Common- 

 wealth, the military rule of a Huntingdonshire squire, and, 

 finally, the Restoration of the Monarchy and the Episcopalian 

 Church. All this upheaving and unsettling of ancient convictions 

 and habits had produced a general ferment in Englishmen's 

 minds, and the greater part of the nation had finally become 

 zealous for nothing in politics and religion, and were ready to 

 turn to any other interesting pursuit. Already during Newton's 

 infancy a number of men were in the habit of meeting to discuss 

 scientific questions in London, and during the Commonwealth at 

 Oxford. After the Restoration they were incorporated and char- 

 tered under the name of the Royal Society. 



Mr. Davey passed on to point out that it was Lord Bacon 

 who was the first " to make Science respectable." That a Lord 

 Chancellor should write an elaborate work in the grandest style, 

 recommending the cultivation of Science, Avas a complete 

 novelty ; and though the writer was by no means abreast of the 

 Science of his own day, and had little effect in his lifetime, yet 

 a generation afterwards his philosophy was of the deepest in- 

 fluence, and made Science not only respectable, but even, for 

 some time, a fashionable pursuit, which even Charles II. and his 

 courtiers delighted in practising. It Avas now felt that unknown 

 possibilities lay hid in the world of Nature, and everyone 

 expected results rather too rapidly. There were still here and 



