10 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 



The interesting partnership between English men-of-the-world and 

 English scholars in promoting the New Philosophy is certainly empha- 

 sized when we join together such names as Samuel Pepys and Isaac 

 Newton, each of whom served as president of the Royal Society within 

 an interval of twenty years. Newton became a fellow of the Royal So- 

 ciety in 1672 and president of the society thirty years later. Samuel 

 Pepys became a fellow in 1664 and president in 1684. Newton's name, 

 moreover, is immortalized with Pepys in another and very interesting 

 manner. The Royal Society not only issued printed transactions from 

 time to time, but it also undertook to print, at its own cost, meritorious 

 scientific books and treatises. It thus came about in 1687 that "Phil- 

 osophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica," was brought out by the 

 the Royal Society. On the title page we read "I. Newton, he wrote it," 

 and below this, "Samuel Pepys, President Royal Society, he printed it." 

 This was a remarkable linking of names. Newton, we all know, led a 

 simple life, quite devoid even of the convivial pleaures enjoyed by nearly 

 all of his associates. Newton was a man of temperate and abstemious 

 habits, and Samuel Pepys a very extreme example of the animalism of 

 the seventeenth century. Newton, nevertheless, was not without per- 

 sonal faults. The publication of the Principia was held up by H alley 

 and Wren 'for the Royal Society for nearly three years because Newton 

 would not give credit to Robert Hooke for his prior discovery of the 

 law of universal gravitation. Newton was finally forced to give in and 

 acknowledge the credit, although he did it in none too gracious a 

 manner. 



Of the men that led British progress in science in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, I shall only detain you with mention of a few. One of the greatest 

 of these was Henry Cavendish, who for fifty-two years rarely missed a 

 meeting of the Royal Society. After Cavendish came into his inheri- 

 tance, he was the wealthiest man in England, if not in the world. His 

 house at Clapham, just in the outskirts of London, was undoubtedly 

 the best laboratory in England. He had everything that money could 

 buy in the way of electrical machines, air pumps, chemicals, et cetera. 

 His scientific library in Soho Square in the city was freely open to a host 

 of young scholars, who drew books from the rich collection in the same 

 manner pursued by Cavendish himself. Then there was Captain James 

 Cook, a sailor, but nevertheless a truly great scientist, commanded by 

 an indomitable spirit of adventure, and possessed of a good sense and 

 of a magnificent personality that made him one of the great figures in 

 British history. Perhaps it is not out of place here to mention our own 

 Benjamin Franklin, who received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society 

 in 1753. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1756 in a re- 

 markable manner. Admission to the Royal Society has always been 

 by request of an applicant vouched for by three members; the only 



