EDINBURGH REVIEW. 343 



place, the acceleration of the motion of that luminary is 

 found to be connected with a particular change in the 

 form of the earth's orbit, &c. &c. The journals of science, 

 when they are edited by men of recognized merit, thus 

 acquire, on certain subjects, an influence which some- 

 times becomes fatal. It is thus I conceive that we may 

 describe the influence which the Edinburgh Review has 

 sometimes exercised. 



Among the contributors to that celebrated journal at 

 its commencement, a young writer was eminently distin- 

 guished, in whom the discoveries of Newton had inspired 

 an ardent admiration. This sentiment so natural, so 

 legitimate, unfortunately led him to misconceive the plau- 

 sible, ingenious, and fertile character of the doctrine of 

 interferences. The author of this theory had not, per- 

 haps, always taken care to clothe his decisions, his state- 

 ments, his critiques, with those v more polished forms of 

 expression the claims of which ought never to be neg- 

 lected, and which moreover, became a matter of imper- 

 ative duty when the question referred to the immortal 

 author of the Natural Philosophy * [the Principia ?] 



* It seems impossible to make this sentence intelligible unless we 

 suppose the "immortal author" spoken of to be Newton, and by con- 

 sequence that the title Natural Philosophy was a slip of the writer's 

 pen, for Principia. Yet the supposition that the hostility of the Edin- 

 burgh Review was at all called forth by any want of courtesy towards 

 Newton in the writings of Young is wholly unsupported by any thing 

 in Young's papers, in which he cites the views of Newton with the 

 greatest respect. Translator. 



Newton's support of the emission theory of light. The authority of 

 names can never be of any avail to the truly inductive philosopher, 

 his motto is emphatically "nullius in verba." But there has been 

 always a propensity among writers on the subject to dwell on such 

 authority, and to array great names on either side of any of those contro- 

 verted points which have divided the scientific world. Perhaps where 

 the question is purely one of opinion and refers simply to hypotheses, 



