Statue to Sir Isaac Newton. 43 
doctrines gained the universal assent of mankind as soon as they 
were clearly understood ; and their originality has never been 
poo called in question. 
e doubts having been raised respecting his inventing the 
eaealus—doubt raised in consequence of his so wrt withhold- 
ing the publication of his method—no sooner w s the i inquiry 
instituted than the evidence produced proved so dicisive that all 
men in all countries acknowledged him to have been by several 
years the earliest inventor, and Leibnitz at the utmost, the first 
taba the only question raised being, first, whether or not 
h orrowed from Newton; and next, whether, as second 
inventor he could have any merit at all, —both which questions 
ave on Se since been decided in favor of Leibnitz, But unde- 
solutions which Descartes could not a tempt; and it is remarka- 
ble that Cavalieri dar Siew curves as polygons, surfaces as com- 
posed of lines, while Roberval 8p geometrical quantities as 
generated by motion ; so that the one 9 roached to the differ- 
ential calculus, the other to fluxions; and Fermat, in the inter- 
val between them, See still nearer yee gee discovery by his 
determination of maxima and minima, and his drawing of tan- 
gents. More recently iy Hadded had made public similar methods 
invented by Schcetin; and what is material, treating the subject 
algebraically, while those just now mentioned had rather dealt 
with it geometrically. It is thus easy to perceive how near an 
approach had been made to the saloultia before the great event 
of its final discovery. There had in like manner been a 
proaches made to the law of gravitation, and the dynamical sys- 
tem of the universe. Galileo’s important propositions on motion, 
especially on the curvilinear motion, and Kepler's laws upon the 
elliptical form of the planetary orbits, the proportion of the 
pee to the times, and of the periodic times to the mean distan- 
ces ; nd Huygens’s theorems on centrifugal forces had been fol- 
lowed by still nearer approaches to the doctrine of attraction. 
Borelli had distinetly ascribed the motion of the satellites ‘to 
vented from flying off by the centrifugal force. Even the com- 
position of white light, and the different action of bodies upon 
its component parts had been vaguely conjectured by Ant. de 
remete Archbishop of Spalatro, at the beginning, and more 
eure. in the middle of the 17th century by Marcus (Kron- 
Prague,) unknown to Newton, who only refers to the 
