118 HISTORY OF PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 



ies, this constant attention to the rising thought, and development of 

 its results in every direction, necessarily engaged and absorbed his 

 spirit, and made him inattentive and almost insensible to external im 

 pressions and common impulses. The stories which are told of his ex- 

 treme absence of mind, probably refer to the two years during which 

 he was composing his Principia, and thus following out a train of rea- 

 soning the most fertile, the most complex, and the most important, 

 which any philosopher had ever had to deal with. The magnificent 

 and striking questions which, during this period, he must have had 

 daily rising before him ; the perpetual succession of difficult problems 

 of which the solution was necessary to his great object ; may well 

 have entirely occupied and possessed him. " He existed only to cal- 

 culate and to think." 25 Often, lost in meditation, he knew not what he 

 did, and his mind appeared to have quite forgotten its connection with 

 the body. His servant reported that, on rising in a morning, he fre- 

 quently sat a large portion of the day, half-dressed, on the side of his 

 bed ; and that his meals waited on the table for hours before he came to 

 take them. Even with his transcendent powers, to do what he did was 

 almost irreconcilable with the common conditions of human life ; and 

 required the utmost devotion of thought, energy of effort, and steadi- 

 ness of will the strongest character, as well as the highest endow- 

 ments, which belong to man. 



Xewton has been so universally considered as the greatest example 

 of a natural philosopher, that his moral qualities, as well as his intel- 

 lect, have been referred to as models of the philosophical -character; 

 and those who love to think that great talents are naturally associated 

 with virtue, have always dwelt with pleasure upon the views given of 

 Newton by his contemporaries ; for they have uniformly represented 

 him as candid and humble, mild and good. We may take as an ex- 

 ample of the impressions prevalent about him in his own time, the ex- 

 pressions of Thomson, in the Poem on his Death. 26 



25 Biot. 



26 In the same strain we find the general voice of the time. For instance, one of 

 Loggan's "Views of Cambridge" is dedicated " Isaaco Newtono. . Mathernatico, 

 Physico, Chymico consnmmatissimo ; nee minus suavitate morum et candore 

 animi . . . spectabili." 



In opposition to the general current of such testimony, we have the complaints 

 of Flamsteed, who ascribes to Newton angry language and harsh conduct in the 

 matter of the publication of the Greenwich Observations, and of Whiston. Yet even 

 Flamsteed speaks well of his general disposition. Whiston was himself so weak 

 nd prejudiced that his testimony is worth very little. 



