OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA. 701 



is changed into a Law for the Force of Gravity, shews the distortion and inversion of Reflexion, 

 which stops half-way." 



I am not able to assign any precise meaning to the Reflexion, which is here used as a term of 

 condemnation, applicable especially to the Newtonian doctrine. It is repeatedly applied in the 

 same manner by Hegel. Thus he says, {g) "that what Kepler expresses in a simple and sublime 

 manner in the form of Laws of the Celestial Motions, Newton has metamorphosed into the Reflexion- 

 Form of the Force of Gravitation." 



Though Hegel thus denies Newton all merit with regard to the explanation of Kepler's laws 

 by means of the gravitation of the planets to the sun, he allows that to the Keplerian Laws 

 Newton added the Principle of Perturbations (k). This Principle he accepts to a certain extent, 

 transforming the expression of it after his peculiar fashion. " It lies," he says, {I) " in this : that 

 matter in general assigns a center for itself: the collective bodies of the system recognize a reference 

 to their sun, and all the individual bodies, according to the relative positions into which they are 

 brought by their motions, form a momentary relation of their gravity towards each other." 



This must appear to us a very loose and insufficient way of stating the Principle of Perturb- 

 ations, but loose as it is, it recognises that the Perturbations depend upon the gravity of the 

 planets one to another, and to the sun. And if the Perturbations depend upon these forces, one 

 can hardly suppose that any one who allows this will deny that the primary undisturbed motions 

 depend upon these forces, and must be explained by means of them ; yet this is what Hegel denies. 



It is evident, on looking at Hegel's mode of reasoning on such subjects, that his views approach 

 towards those of Aristotle and the Aristotelians ; according to which motions were divided into 



natural Sind unnatural; — the celestial motions were circular and uniform in their nature; and 



the like. Perhaps it may be worth while to shew how completely Hegel adheres to these ancient 

 views, by an extract from the additions to the Articles on Celestial Motions, made in the last edition 

 of the Encyclopedia. He says (w), 



" The motion of the heavenly bodies is not a being pulled this way and that, as is imagined 

 (by the Newtonians). They go along, as the ancients said, like blessed gods. The celestial con- 

 formity is not such a one as has the principle of rest or motion external to itself. It is not right 

 to say because a stone is inert, and the whole earth consists of stones, and the other heavenly 

 bodies are of the same nature as the earth, therefore the heavenly bodies are inert. This conclusion 

 makes the properties of the whole the same as those of the part. Impulse, Pressure, Resistance, 

 Friction, Pulling, and the like, are valid only for other than celestial matter." 



• There can be no doubt that this is a very different doctrine from that of Newton. 

 I will only add to these specimens of HegeFs physics, a specimen of the logic by which he 

 refutes the Newtonian argument which has just been adduced ; namely, that the celestial bodies 

 are matter, and that matter, as we see in terrestrial matter, is inert. He says (.v), 



" Doubtless both are matter, as a good thought and a bad thought are both thoughts ; but the 

 bad one is not therefore good, because it is a thought." 



Tbinity Lodge, 



May 2, 1849. 



k 



V..... VIII. Paut V. 1 N 



