10 HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM. 



nineteen years of age, presented to the Boyal Academy a memoir of great ori- 

 ginality upon a difficult subject in the higher geometry ; and at eighteen, pub- 

 lished his great work on curves of double curvature, composed during the two 

 preceding years. Pascal, too, at sixteen, wrote an excellent treatise on conic 

 sections. That Newton cannot be ranked in this respect with those extraordinary 

 persons is owing to the accidents which prevented him from entering upon 

 mathematical study before his eighteenth year ; and then a much greater marvel 

 was wrought than even the Clairauts and the Pascals displayed. His earliest his- 

 tory is involved in some obscurity, and the most celebrated of men has, in this 

 particular, been compared to the most celebrated of rivers (the Nile), as if the 

 course of both in its feeble state had been concealed from mortal eyes. We have 

 it, however, well ascerlaiued that within four years, between the age of eighteen 

 and twenty-two, he had begun to study juathematic science, and had taken his 

 place among the greatest masters ; learnt for the first time the elements of geo- 

 metry and analysis, and discovered a calculus which entirely changed the face of 

 the science, effecting a complete revolution in thai and in every branch of philo- 

 sophy connected with it. Before 1601 he had not read Euclid; in 16G5 he had 

 committed to writing the method of fluxions. At twenty-five yearsof age hehad 

 discovered tin- law of gravitation, and laid the foundation of celestial dynamics, 

 the sciences created by him. Before ten years had elapsed, he added to his dis- 

 coveries that of the fundamental properties of light. Bo brilliant a course of dis- 

 covery in so short a time, changing and reconstructing analytical, astronomical, 

 and optical science, almost defies belief. The statement could only be deemed 

 possible by an appeal to the incontestable evidence that proves it strictly true. 

 By a rare felicity these doctrines gained the universal assent of mankind as soon 

 as they were clearly understood; and their originality has never been seriously 

 called in question. Some doubts having been raised respecting his inventing the 

 calculus — doubts raised in consequence of his so long withholding the publication 

 of his method — no sooner was the inquiry instituted than the evidence produced 

 proved so decisive that all men, in all countries, acknowledged him to have been 

 by several years the earliest inventor, and Leibnitz, at the utmost, the first pub- 

 lisher. [The noble and learned Lord traced the history of Newton, as far as it is 

 known, namely, from the year luu'5, when that great genius first turned his 

 attention t :> the method of fluxions, touching on his great discoveries in optics, 

 gravitation, the diil'erential calculus, &c, but diverging considerably from the 

 main issue, so as to exhibit the noble lord's own learning quite as much as to 

 glorify the transcendent genius of the deceased philosopher.] Leibnitz, con- 

 tinued the noble and learned Lord, when asked at the royal table in Berlin'his 

 opinion of Newton, said that " taking mathematicians from the beginning of the 

 world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better 

 half." " The Principia will ever remain a monument of the profound genius 

 which revealed to us the greatest laws of the universe" arc the words of Laplace. 

 " That work stands pre-eminent above all the other productions of the human 

 mind." " The discovery of that simple and general law, by the greatness and 

 T&riety of the Objects which it embraces, confers honour upon the intellect of 

 man." Lagrange, wc arc told by D'Alcmbert, was wont to describe Newton as 

 Hie greatest genius that ever existed ; but to add how fortunate he was also, 

 " because there can only ouco be found a system of the universe to establish." 

 " Never," says the Father of the Institute of Prance — one tilling a high place 

 among the most eminent of its members — " never," says M. Biot, " was the su- 

 premacy of intellect BO justly established, and so fully confessed." " In mathe- 

 matical and in experimental science without an equal, and without an example; 

 combining the genius for both in its highest degree." The Frha-ipui* he terms 

 the greatest work ever produced by the mind c 1 ' man ; adding, in the words of 

 Bailer, thai a nearer approach to the Divine nature has not been permitted to 

 mortals. " la first giving to the world Newton's method of lluuons," says pon- 



tenelle, " Leibnitz did like Prometheus— he stole fire from heaven to teach men 

 the secret." "Does Newton," Ij'llopital asked, "sleep and wake like other 

 incur 1 1 figure him to myself us of a celestial kind, wholly severed from mor- 

 tality." 



In the autumn of ls."7, Lord Brougham (on Oct, 18) inaugurated at Birming- 

 ham the Association for the Pron "I Soi ial Si icm ■, i lit ended " to bear a- 



Lord Brougham edited and annotated the Prinoipia. 



