ELOQE Off BUFFOK. 41 



minds less elevated than his own, or that, forgetting 

 too much his own superiority, he fancied he was suffi- 

 ciently explicit when he understood himself; no one at 

 first comprehended him, and some of his countrymen 

 scarcely guessed at his meaning. But his discoveries 

 were discussed by the learned, and each day they were 

 made clearer, even by the objections of those who com- 

 bated them ; accordingly, they soon produced a great 

 revolution in the sciences, which England and Germany 

 recognised, while France still hesitated to submit to it, 

 and blushed to receive instruction from a rival. The 

 correct sciences do not readily tolerate these discussions. 

 The severity of their methods, and the clearness of the 

 principles on which they are founded, seem to render it 

 necessary that every proposition should be admitted 

 without difficulty, or rejected without hesitation ; but 

 the kind of obscurity which Newton had either thrown 

 over his writings, or at least left upon them, indicating 

 his proofs rapidly, or disdaining to give them at all, 

 dissatisfied those who held to the old laws, and, by 

 authorizing doubts, served at least as a pretext for the 

 contradictions which these new ideas at first encoun- 

 tered. Few people were anxious to understand an 

 author who appeared to have no wish to be understood. 

 This resistance, however, could not be long continued. 

 People soon passed from one extreme to the other. 

 The greater part of those theories which Newton had 

 given without demonstration, having had the requisite 

 evidence supplied by other hands, what was not proved 



