146 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. G, 



the procession of ideas too frequently con- 

 sists of formidable groups of painfullj'' ac- 

 curate and technical paragraphs labelled 

 Peoposition, Coeollaey and Scholium. 

 This formalism leads to a strained and un- 

 attractive Uterary style, which frequently 

 degenerates into intolerable complexity and 

 obscurity. It is against this sort of 'logic- 

 chopping' that most minds rebel, against 

 this excessive attention to the husks rather 

 than to the kernel of the subject. Another 

 and equally serious result of the apotheosis 

 of pure geometry is the tendency to magnifj^ 

 the importance of ideal problems and the 

 work of problem solving. The exclusive 

 pursuit of such aimless puzzles constitutes 

 the platitude of mathematical research, 

 though it often happens that the devotees 

 to this species of work are mistaken for 

 mathematicians and natural philosophers. 

 It is not specially difficult in our day to 

 understand how a mind of N"ewton's capac- 

 ity should achieve so many important re- 

 sults. The simple fact is that he possessed 

 just such powers of obseiwation and reiiec- 

 tion as were needed to correlate the facts 

 his predecessors and contemporaries had 

 collected; and the most instructive lesson 

 of his life to us is the success which attended 

 the industrious application of those powers. 

 But, on the other hand, it cannot be said 

 that the circumstances of his life were very 

 propitious for his work, or that he availed 

 himself to the fullest extent of his opportu- 

 nities. His favorite studies were, in fact, 

 pursued somewhat fitfully, and not always 

 with a just appreciation of their merits. 

 Possessing to a painful degree that modest}^ 

 which is born of a knowledge of things, he 

 shrunk from the controversy into which his 

 discoveries di-ew him ; and it appears prob- 

 able that his Princijyia would never have 

 been written had not his friend Halley 

 urged him on to the marvelous feat which 

 brought out that masterpiece in less than 

 two years' time. The demand for works on 



natural philosophy in his day and the ap- 

 preciation of the public for natural philoso- 

 phers may be inferred from the fact that 

 neither Newton nor the Eoyal Society of 

 London, to which liis great work was dedi- 

 cated, was able to furnish the funds essential 

 to print an edition of 250 cojiies. The en- 

 tire expense of this first edition was born by 

 Halley, who maj' thus be justly called the 

 discoverer of his more famous fellow- 

 countryman. In such hard times and under 

 such depressing circumstances, it is not 

 strange that ]S"ewton should have sought 

 and obtained a position in the public service; 

 though it seems a pity that one of the great- 

 est of philosophers, one who said his head 

 never ached except when studying the 

 mechanics of the motions of the moon, 

 should have busied himself during his 

 declining years with the dreary details of 

 fiscal business as master of the mint. 



The period of about a hundred years 

 which followed the epoch of the culmina- 

 tion of Newton's acti\'ity is remarkable for 

 the diversitj' of mechanical problems to 

 which mathematicians devoted their atten- 

 tion. The discoveries of Newton comprised 

 and superseded the discoveries of Coperni- 

 cus and Kepler. The sun with his planets 

 and the planets with their satellites became 

 grand mechanical systems under the law of 

 gravitation. But a crowd of additional 

 consequences of this law demanded serious 

 study and ijrolonged observation. ]S^e^vton 

 had seen that the gravitation and rotation 

 of the earth ought to make it flattened at 

 the poles. To test this question it was es- 

 sential to devise ways and means for measur- 

 ing the size and shape of the earth. Out of 

 this necessity grew the science of geodesy. 

 Maupertius and Clairaut had to be sent to 

 Lapland, and Bouguer and La Condamine 

 to Peru to measure arcs of meridian before 

 definite ideas of the figure and dimensions 

 of our planet were attained. The preces- 

 sion of the equinoxes had been discovered 



