GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 149 



nomical gravity had occurred to his mind ; if he had 

 lived twenty or thirty years longer, he might have 

 survived in history as the discoverer of the great 

 problem. 



Be this as it may, there now arose another man 

 greater than his predecessors, and greater than all 

 his contemporaries ; he also was an Englishman, 

 by name Isaac Newton. What others guessed, or 

 concluded on insufficient evidence, became, in his 

 powerful hands, clear and well-grounded truths, 

 proved, so far as such things could be proved, by 

 rigid mathematical reasoning, and established on a 

 solid basis, which time has not shaken, and which 

 subsequent investigation has confirmed. Others had 

 supposed the existence of the law of attraction by 

 which the Sun acted on the planets ; many persons 

 had understood the existence of terrestrial gravi- 

 tation. Newton showed that these two are identical ; 

 and, moreover, that every particle of matter attracts 

 every other particle mutually, and according to the 

 one universal law, that of the inverse square of the 

 distance ; so that a vast planet revolving round the 

 Sun obeys the same law as a pebble dropped from 

 one's hand to the Earth. The popular story of his 

 having been suddenly led to this conclusion by the 

 sight of an apple falling is apparently fabulous ; 

 and what really occurred is this : he sat alone one 

 day in a garden, and fell into a speculation (as men 

 of scientific mind are apt to do) on the power of 

 gravity, that is, of gravity as we feel it here on 



