

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES. 535 



philosophers of Continental Europe ; and for the 

 first quarter of last century belief in universal 

 gravitation was an insularity of our countrymen. 



Voltaire, during a visit which he made to 

 England in 1727, wrote: "A Frenchman who 

 arrives in London finds a great alteration in 

 philosophy, as in other things. He left the world 

 full ; he finds it empty. At Paris you see the 

 universe composed of vortices of subtle matter ; at 

 London we see nothing of the kind. With you 

 it is the pressure of the Moon which causes the 

 tides of the sea ; in England it is the sea which 

 gravitates towards the Moon. . . . You will 

 observe also that the Sun, which in France has 

 nothing to do with the business, here comes in for 

 a quarter of it. Among you Cartesians all is done 

 by impulsion : with the Newtonians it is done by 

 an attraction of which we know the cause no 

 better." 1 Indeed, the Newtonian opinions had 

 scarcely any disciples in France till Voltaire 

 asserted their claims on his return from England 



1 Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 2, pp. 202 



