258 THE WORLD MACHINE 



knew that many different estimates had been made. The truth 

 seems to be that the law of gravitation had a gradual develop- 

 ment in Newton's mind ; when the originality of his discovery 

 was called in question perhaps he yielded to an impulse, natural 

 enough, to date it back as far as his earliest conjectures. 



There are doubtless few things in this world more hopeless 

 than to attempt a just estimate of character, let alone that of 

 Newton. We read with a smile the easy pages in which a 

 Macaulay and his like lifts to his pedestal a venerated Whig 

 and damns to perdition the hated Tory. Whoso will but 

 attentively watch the flux and changes of his own interests, 

 impulses, motives, deeds, from day to day, from year to year, 

 from one period of life to another, will hardly be so ready with 

 his judgments. When Newton's Principia appeared, Hooke 

 promptly put in a claim to priority. It was the second of 

 their encounters ; he was a battling man. Newton was annoyed 

 and disgusted. They had had an extended correspondence 

 over planetary motion. Newton's work appeared years after 

 Hooke had suggested, if he had not demonstrated, the central 

 law which gave the book its fame. Hooke was aggrieved that 

 it should contain no mention of his claim ; possibly Wren and 

 Halley had something of the same feeling regarding themselves. 



In the controversy that followed, the character of Newton 

 does not shine. He did not have that breadth of mind which 

 enabled Kepler generously to applaud the discoveries of 

 his friend Galileo, nor that magnanimity which enabled 

 Darwin to give to Wallace an equal place beside himself in the 

 discovery of the origin of species ; the fact is rather painfully 

 evident. In small charities, he was generous beyond his slender 

 means, to relative or stranger. Towards his contemporaries 

 he seems to us, at this distance perhaps, as we may gather, to 

 his friends as well, rather grudging. 



In after years a still more serious controversy, bitterly to be 

 carried on by partisans long after his death, was to arise over 

 his discovery of the calculus. Alike in this as in the others 

 he discloses a human weakness to hold, unaccompanied, the 

 centre of the stage. In a second edition, the more generous 

 Halley induced Newton to make some recognition of Hooke ; 

 but he will minimise the claim of the latter so far as he may 

 by dividing the recognition among all three Hooke, Wren, and 

 Halley too. 



