142 Reviews, and Notices respecting New Books. 
sympathy in Flamsteed, unconscious of the nature of the then ex- 
isting crisis in the history of astronomy. 
*«« Flamsteed was only four years younger than Newton; he never 
fully accepted Newton's theory, nor comprehended its nature. Like 
all astronomers of his time, he understood by ‘ theory’ only a mode 
of expressing laws of phenomena, not a new generalization by which 
such laws are referred to a physical cause.” Thus, having been told 
that Newton had deduced all the inequalities of the moon’s motion 
from the laws of gravity alone, he says, in a letter to Lowthorp, 
“ With some indignation I answered that he had been as many years upon 
this thing, as I had been on the constellations and planets altogether:.....that 
I had imparted above 200 of the moon’s observed places to him, which one 
would think should be sufficient to limit any theory by; and since he has 
altered and suited his theory till it fitted these observations, ’tis no wonder 
that it represents them: but still he is more beholden to them for it than 
he is to his speculations about gravity, which had misled him. 
«He appears,” adds Mr. Whewell, « to have thought too directly 
of the value of his observations, as the means of purchasing reputation. 
How otherwise are we to account for the jealousy with which he 
objected to Newton’s combining Cassini’s observations of the comet 
of 1680 with his? when it must have been clear, even with his own 
notion of a theory, that the truth of the theory would be the better 
established, the more observations it agreed with. This is Flam- 
steed’s own account of an interview with Newton in the letter just 
quoted : 
“Some occasion of discourse about comets happening, I acquainted him 
that Dr. Gregory gave out that since he had altered his paths of comets, and 
instead of parabolas made them ellipses, his theories would represent all 
Mons. Cassini’s observations within a minute, whereas I thought he had 
only my observed places to represent, and that it was not only an injury ¢o 
me, but the nation, to rob our Observatory of what was due to it, and further 
to bestow it on the Hrench.—p. 174. 
As the accusations against Newton are, as Mr. Whewell justly 
observes, wholly ex parte, so it is evident how narrow were the views 
and how wretched the temper of his detractor. Mr. Whewell cha- 
yacterizes Flamsteed as having been ‘“‘ of weak temper, suspicious, 
irritable, and self-tormenting. We can hardly think otherwise of a 
man who was in the habit of brooding over the movements of spleen 
excited by casual expressions in the letters of his correspondents, 
and recording them in ink on the paper. Thus, as early as 1694, 
Newton happens to write to him (p. 139), «I believe you have a 
wrong notion of my method in determining the moon’s motions’; 
on which Flamsteed makes this note, ‘I had: and he of me: and 
still has. And after this period almost every letter of Newton’s has 
a similar comment appended to it, and these become more and more 
bitter. Yet Newton appears to have been his friend as long as Flam- 
steed’s temper allowed him to beso. A little after the above letter 
he writes : 
“ What you say about my having a mean opinion of you is a great mis- 
take. I have defended you where there has been occasion, but never gave 
way to any insinuations against you. And what I wrote to you, proceeded 
only from hence, that you seemed /o suspect me of an ungrateful reservedness, 
which made me begin to be uneasy,” —p. 146. 
