i OUTLOOK AND ENDEAVOUR 9 



token of admiration for the scientific attainments and 

 self-abnegation of its director. 



A correspondent asked Newton's permission to publish 

 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the 

 solutions, which Newton had sent him, of some mathe- 

 matical problems. Newton was at a time of life his 

 age was about twenty-seven when most men wish to 

 obtain credit for their work, but he particularly asked 

 that no mention should be made of his name in connec- 

 tion with this and like matters. " For I see not," he 

 added, " what there is desirable in public esteem were 

 I able to acquire and maintain it. It would perhaps 

 increase my acquaintance, the things which I chiefly 

 study to decline." 



Newton was, indeed, never hasty in announcing his 

 discoveries, and had little of the spirit of rushing into 

 print to claim priority to which some investigators 

 attach so much importance. After he had invented the 

 reflecting telescope in 1668, he allowed the instrument to 

 lie by him for several years before its existence became 

 known to some of the fellows of the Royal Society who 

 induced him to send it to the Society, where it is now 

 carefully preserved. His important observations of the 

 compound nature of sunlight, a beam of which he 

 decomposed by passing it through a glass prism, were 

 not communicated to the Society until 1672, though 

 they were made before the invention of the reflecting 

 telescope ; and his discovery of the law of gravitation 

 was completed several years before Halley knew of it 

 and was able to make it known to the world. 



What, then, are the motives of scientific work, if the 

 praise and rewards of the world have no meaning ? 

 Chiefly love of knowledge and the joy of discovery ; 

 and possessing these things the man of science faces 



