SIMON NEWCOMB. 
159 
And these appreciations were from a man himself now 
characterized as “the greatest astronomer of his time/ 5 “at 
the head of the cultivators of the astronomy of appreciation/’ 
whose own particular field was celestial mechanics, and whose 
task (to build up the whole theory of our planetary world 
on an absolutely homogeneous basis of constants) has been 
declared “almost superhuman” ; a man who was in fact one 
of the gigantic figures in science generally, “worthy to be 
ranked with the rarely great, like Bichat in medicine, Archi- 
medes in mechanics, and Darwin in evolutionary thought.” 
The essentials of his achievements in astronomy included, 
of course, a definite and particular purpose and a prodigious 
capacity for mere labor. They necessitated absorption and 
concentration ; but for a man so engaged upon a field so 
remote he had a singular interest in and touch with matters 
near at hand. The affairs of the stars never wholly abstracted 
him, any more than they did Houzeau, from the affairs of 
earth, and his certainty as to the regulation of the former 
by law induced him to believe in the existence of laws among 
the latter which could be ascertained and should be regarded. 
In his political economy he enunciated at least one such 
law, whose influence upon economic thought may be lasting. 
I do not know that the treatise as a whole is a contribution 
likely to be, but that for its time and within its scope it was 
clear and helpful in its exposition and essentially sound in 
its tenets was, I believe, its general reputation. He had time 
for other excursions, even into the field of romance; but, as 
Sainte Beuve remarks in his essay on Franklin, such excur- 
sions or speculations are but the recreation of the man of 
exact science. The theme of that romance, by the way, was, 
as you will recall, a discovery by which the effect of gravi- 
tation could be overcome. In that very essay of Sainte 
Beuve’s there is quoted a letter from Franklin to Priestley, 
written in 1780. In this letter Franklin regrets having been 
born so early, imagining “the degree to which the power of 
man over matter may be carried in a thousand years.” 
“Possiblv.” he adds, “man will have learned how to disen- 
gage from great bodies their weight, and give them an abso- 
lute lightness which will facilitate transportation.” 
