NEWTON 



4190 



NEWTON 



fetched interpretations are other charges made 

 against higher critics. 



Because of the manifest unfairness of some of 

 the higher critics, advanced methods of New 

 Testament interpretation have met with bitter 

 hostility. The general movement, however, 

 ought not to be hastily condemned, for wise 

 and unprejudiced study of the life of Christ 

 and the work of the apostles has brought many 

 good results. The tendency of the more ad- 

 vanced theological schools is to teach the New 

 Testament in the light of all that modern prog- 

 ress has taught. Sincere and devout investiga- 

 tors have found that they can study the Biblical 

 record with open minds without having their 

 faith undermined, and the churches are gradu- 

 ally coming to appreciate the necessity of Bib- 

 lical criticism in its truest and best sense. In 

 thus responding to the liberal tendencies of the 

 age they have strengthened their hold on the 

 young people of the colleges and universities. 



NEW THOUGHT, a form of idealistic phil- 

 osophy that received wide attention early in 

 the twentieth century. It is a revival of some 

 of the theories advanced by Emerson and his 

 followers, and affirms the superiority of the 

 mind over material conditions and circum- 

 stances. In the emphasis it places on the spir- 

 itual law New Thought is akin to Christian 

 Science, but its adherents do not deny the exist- 

 ence of matter. If the central idea of the 

 philosophy can be expressed so briefly, it is best 

 condensed into the phrase, "As a man thinketh 

 in his heart, so is he." New Thought advocates 

 believe that the sick may be cured through 

 mental treatment, and that the law of mind 

 control should be applied to other problems. 

 They consistently exalt the spiritual over the 

 material, the life within over the world of sense. 

 There is no definite organization, but a number 

 of periodicals devoted to the New Thought 

 principles are in circulation, and books and 

 pamphlets on the subject are constantly in- 

 creasing. No exact figures as to the number 

 of New Thought adherents are available, but 

 undoubtedly many who accept or are in sym- 

 pathy with the philosophy are affiliated with 

 the various churches. 



NEWTON, SIR ISAAC (1642-1727), an English 

 mathematician, astronomer and natural philoso- 

 pher, famed as the discoverer of many im- 

 portant laws in science, but honored chiefly 

 because he formulated and made known the 

 principle of universal gravitation (see GRAVITA- 

 TION). This is one of the most important 

 achievements in the whole history of natural 



own 



Nature and Nature's laws lay 

 was hid in night; 



be! " 



science. Newton was born on Christmas Day, 



1642, at Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire. During 



his grammar 



school days, spent 



in the neighbor- 



ing town of Grant- 



ham, he was much 



more interested in 



fashioning ingen- 



ious devices of a 



mechanical nature 



than he was in 



studying his les- 



sons, and, accord- 



ing to his 



, 

 account, he 



considered a very d 

 poor student. POPE. 



Among his boyish inventions were a small wind- 

 mill that would grind wheat and corn, a water 

 clock run by dropping water instead of by 

 wheels, and a sundial which may be seen to 

 this day, on the wall of the house where he was 

 born. At Trinity College, Cambridge, however, 

 to which he was admitted in 1661, he made a 

 brilliant record in mathematics. 



Early in 1665 Newton received his degree of 

 B. A. He was then beginning to do original 

 work, and during the next two years announced 

 his discovery of the binominal theorem, the 

 method of tangents and other important mathe- 

 matical principles. It is believed, too, that at 

 this period he began his investigations on the 

 subject of universal gravitation. Though some 

 authorities reject the familiar story of the 

 falling apple, whose downward movement sug- 

 gested to him the law that all particles of mat- 

 ter in the universe exert an attraction on one 

 another, yet it is accepted by many as authen- 

 tic and entirely reasonable. It was several 

 years, however, before the laws of gravitation 

 could be fully worked out and demonstrated 

 by him. His contributions to the theory of 

 light were hardly of less importance. By ad- 

 mitting a beam of sunlight through a small 

 aperture into a darkened room, so that the 

 beam passed through a prism, he showed that 

 white light is a combination of the seven rain- 

 bow colors (see LIGHT; SPECTRUM ANALYSIS; 

 COLOR). In 1704 he published, under the title 

 Opticks, the results of his experiments and 

 studies in color and light. He also made an 

 exhaustive study of the reflecting telescope, so 

 useful to him in his investigations, and he suc- 

 ceeded in constructing a type of instrument 

 that has been of great value to astronomers. 



