SEQUEL TO THE EPOCH OF NEWTON. 205 



nomer Royal, a most laborious and exact observer. 

 Flamsteed at first listened with complacency to the 

 promises of improvements in the Lunar Tables, 

 which the new doctrines held forth, and was willing 

 to assist Newton, and to receive assistance from 

 him. But after a time, he lost his respect for 

 Newton's theory, and ceased to take any interest in 

 it. He then declared to one of his correspondents 8 , 

 "I have determined to lay these crotchets of Sir Isaac 

 Newton's wholly aside." We need not, however, 

 find any difficulty in this, if we recollect that 

 Flamsteed, though a good observer, was no philoso- 

 pher; never understood by a Theory anything 

 more than a Formula which should predict results ; 

 and was incapable of comprehending the ob- 

 ject of Newton's theory, which was to assign causes 

 as well as rules, and to satisfy the conditions of 

 mechanics as well as of geometry. 



Sect. 3. Reception of the Newtonian Theory 

 abroad. 



\ 



THE reception of the Newtonian theory on the Con- 

 tinent, was much more tardy and unwilling than in 

 its native island. Even those whose mathematical 

 attainments most fitted them to appreciate its proofs, 

 were prevented by some peculiarity of view from 

 adopting it as a system; as Leibnitz, Bernoulli, 

 Huyghens; who all clung to one modification or 



8 Baily's Account of Flamsteed, #c., p. 309. 



