Newton Writes Against the Trinity

On the ascension of George I., in 1714, Newton became an object of profound interest at court.

His position under government, his surpassing fame, his spotless character, and, above all, his deep and consistent piety, attracted the reverent regard of the Princess of Wales, afterward queen-consort to George II.

She was a woman of a highly cultivated mind, and derived the greatest pleasure from conversing with Newton and corresponding with Leibnitz.

One day, in conversation with her, our author mentioned and explained a new system of chronology, which he had composed at Cambridge, where he had been in the habit “of refreshing himself with history and chronology, when he was weary with other studies.” Subsequently, in the year 1718, she requested a copy of this interesting and ingenious work.

Newton, accordingly, drew up an abstract of the system from the separate papers in which it existed, and gave it to her on condition that it should not be communicated to any other person. Sometime afterward she requested that the Abbé Conti might be allowed to have a copy of it.

He consented: and the abbé received a copy of the manuscript, under the like injunction and promise of secrecy. This manuscript bore the title of “A short Chronicle, from the First Memory of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia, by Alexander the Great.”

After Newton took up his residence in London, he lived in a style suited to his elevated position and rank. He kept his carriage, with an establishment of three male and three female servants. But to everything like vain show and luxury he was utterly averse.

His household affairs, for the last twenty years of his life, were under the charge of his niece, Mrs. Catherine Barton, wife and widow of Colonel Barton—a woman of great beauty and accomplishment—and subsequently married to John Conduit, Esq. At home Newton was distinguished by that dignified and gentle hospitality which springs alone from true nobleness. On all proper occasions, he gave splendid entertainments, though without ostentation.

In society, whether of the palace or the cottage, his manner was self-possessed and urbane; his look benign and affable; his speech candid and modest; his whole air undisturbedly serene. He had none of what are usually called the singularities of genius; suiting himself easily to every company—except that of the vicious and wicked; and speaking of himself and others, naturally, so as never even to be suspected of vanity.

There was in him, if we may be allowed the expression, a wholeness of nature, which did not admit of such imperfections and weakness—the circle was too perfect, the law too constant, and the disturbing forces too slight to suffer scarcely any of those eccentricities which so interrupt and mar the movements of many bright spirits, rendering their course through the world more like that of the blazing meteor than that of the light and life-imparting sun. In brief, the words greatness and goodness could not, humanly speaking, be more fitly employed than when applied as the pre-eminent characteristics of this pure, meek and venerable sage.

In his 80th year, Newton developed stone in the bladder. His disease was pronounced incurable.

He succeeded, however, by means of a strict regimen, and other precautions, in alleviating his complaint, and procuring long intervals of ease.

His diet, always frugal, was now extremely temperate, consisting chiefly of broth, vegetables, and fruit, with, now and then, a little butcher meat.

He gave up the use of his carriage, and employed, in its stead, when he went out, a chair. All invitations to dinner were declined; and only small parties were received, occasionally, at his own house.

In 1724 he wrote to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, offering to contribute twenty pounds yearly toward the salary of Mr. Maclaurin, provided he accepted the assistant Professorship of Mathematics in the University of that place.

Not only in the cause of ingenuity and learning, but in that of religion—in relieving the poor and assisting his relations, Newton annually expended large sums. He was generous and charitable almost to a fault. Those, he would often remark, who gave away nothing till they died, never gave at all.

His wealth had become considerable by a prudent economy; but he regarded money in no other light than as one of the means wherewith he had been intrusted to do good, and he faithfully employed it accordingly.

He experienced, in spite of all his precautionary measures, a return of his complaint in the month of August, of the same year, 1724, when he passed a stone the size of pea; it came from him in two pieces, the one at the distance of two days from the other.

Tolerable good health then followed for some months. In January, 1725, however, he was taken with a violent cough and inflammation of the lungs. In consequence of this attack, he was prevailed upon to remove to Kensington, where his health greatly improved.

In February following, he was attacked in both feet with the gout, of the approach of which he had received, a few years before, a slight warning, and the presence of which now produced a very beneficial change in his general health. Mr. Conduit, his nephew, has recorded a curious conversation which took place, at or near this time, between himself and Sir Isaac.

“I was, on Sunday night, the 7th March, 1724-5, at Kensington, with Sir Isaac Newton, in his lodgings, just after he was out of a fit of the gout, which he had had in both of his feet, for the first time, in the eighty-third year of his age. He was better after it, and his head clearer and memory stronger than I had known them for some time. He then repeated to me, by way of discourse, very distinctly, though rather in answer to my queries, than in one continued narration, what he had often hinted to me before, viz.: that it was his conjecture (he would affirm nothing) that there was a sort of revolution in the heavenly bodies; that the vapours and light, emitted by the sun, which had their sediment, as water and other matter, had gathered themselves, by degrees, into a body, and attracted more matter from the planets, and at last made a secondary planet (viz.: one of those that go round another planet), and then, by gathering to them, and attracting more matter, became a primary planet; and then, by increasing still, became a comet, which, after certain revolutions, by coming nearer and nearer to the sun, had all its volatile parts condensed, and became a matter fit to recruit and replenish the sun (which must waste by the constant heat and light it emitted), as a faggot would this fire if put into it (we were sitting by a wood fire), and that that would probably be the effect of the comet of 1680, sooner or later; for, by the observations made upon it, it appeared, before it came near the sun, with a tail only two or three degrees long; but, by the heat it contracted, in going so near the sun, it seemed to have a tail of thirty or forty degrees when it went from it; that he could not say when this comet would drop into the sun; it might perhaps have five or six revolutions more first, but whenever it did it would so much increase the heat of the sun that this earth would be burned, and no animals in it could live. That he took the three phenomena, seen by Hipparchus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler’s disciples, to have been of this kind, for he could not otherwise account for an extraordinary light, as those were, appearing, all at once, among the the fixed stars (all which he took to be suns, enlightening other planets, as our sun does ours), as big as Mercury or Venus seems to us, and gradually diminishing, for sixteen months, and then sinking into nothing. He seemed to doubt whether there were not intelligent beings, superior to us, who superintended these revolutions of the heavenly bodies, by the direction of the Supreme Being. He appeared also to be very clearly of opinion that the inhabitants of this world were of short date, and alledged, as one reason for that opinion, that all arts, as letters, ships, printing, needle, &c., were discovered within the memory of history, which could not have happened if the world had been eternal; and that there were visible marks of ruin upon it which could not be effected by flood only. When I asked him how this earth could have been repeopled if ever it had undergone the same fate it was threatened with hereafter, by the comet of 1680, he answered, that required the power of a Creator. He said he took all the planets to be composed of the same matter with this earth, viz.: earth, water, stones, &c., but variously concocted. I asked him why he would not publish his conjectures, as conjectures, and instanced that Kepler had communicated his; and though he had not gone near so far as Kepler, yet Kepler’s guesses were so just and happy that they had been proved and demonstrated by him. His answer was, “I do not deal in conjectures.” But, on my talking to him about the four observations that had been made of the comet of 1680, at 574 years distance, and asking him the particular times, he opened his Principia, which laid on the table, and showed me the particular periods, viz,: 1st. The Julium Sidus, in the time of Justinian, in 1106, in 1680.

“And I, observing that he said there of that comet, ‘incidet in corpus solis,’ and in the next paragraph adds, ‘stellæ fixæ refici possunt,’ told him I thought he owned there what we had been talking about, viz.: that the comet would drop into the sun, and that fixed stars were recruited and replenished by comets when they dropped into them; and, consequently, that the sun would be recruited too; and asked him why he would not own as fully what he thought of the sun as well as what he thought of the fixed stars. He said, that concerned us more; and, laughing, added, that he had said enough for people to know his meaning.”

In the summer of 1725, a French translation of the chronological MS., of which the Abbé Conti had been permitted, some time previous, to have a copy, was published at Paris, in violation of all good faith. The Punic Abbé had continued true to his promise of secrecy while he remained in England; but no sooner did he reach Paris than he placed the manuscript into the hands of M. Freret, a learned antiquarian, who translated the work, and accompanied it with an attempted refutation of the leading points of the system. In November, of the same year, Newton received a presentation copy of this publication, which bore the title of Abrege de Chronologie de M. le Chevalier Newton, fait par lui-meme, et traduit sur le manuscript Anglais. Soon afterward a paper entitled, Remarks on the Obervations made on a Chronological Index of Sir Isaac Newton, translated into French by the Observator, and published at Paris, was drawn up by our author, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1725. It contained a history of the whole matter, and a triumphant reply to the objections of M. Freret. This answer called into the field a fresh antagonist, Father Soueiet, whose five dissertations on this subject were chiefly remarkable for the want of knowledge and want of decorum, which they displayed. In consequence of these discussions, Newton was induced to prepare his larger work for the press, and had nearly completed it at the time of his death. It was published in 1728, under the title of The Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms Amended, to which is prefixed a short Chronicle from the first memory of things in Europe to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. It consists of six chapters: 1. On the Chronology of the Greeks; according to Whiston, our author wrote out eighteen copies of this chapter with his own hand, differing little from one another. 2. Of the Empire of Egypt; 3. Of the Assyrian Empire; 4. Of the two contemporary Empires of the Babylonians and Medes; 5. A Description of the Temple of Solomon; 6. Of the Empire of the Persians; this chapter was not found copied with the other five, but as it was discovered among his papers, and appeared to be a continuation of the same work, the Editor thought proper to add it thereto. Newton’s Letter to a person of distinction who had desired his opinion of the learned Bishop Lloyd’s Hypothesis concerning the form of the most ancient year, closes this enumeration of his Chronological Writings.

A third edition of the Principia appeared in 1726, with many changes and additions. About four years were consumed in its preparation and publication, which were under the superintendance of Dr. Henry Pemberton, an accomplished mathematician, and the author of “A view of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy.” 1728. This gentleman enjoyed numerous opportunities of conversing with the aged and illustrious author. “I found,” says Pemberton, “he had read fewer of the modern mathematicians than one could have expected; but his own prodigious invention readily supplied him with what he might have an occasion for in the pursuit of any subject he undertook. I have often heard him censure the handling geometrical subjects by algebraic calculations; and his book of Algebra he called by the name of Universal Arithmetic, in opposition to the injudicious title of Geometry, which Descartes had given to the treatise, wherein he shows how the geometer may assist his invention by such kind of computations. He thought Huygens the most elegant of any mathematical writer of modern times, and the most just imitator of the ancients. Of their taste and form of demonstration, Sir Isaac always professed himself a great admirer. I have heard him even censure himself for not following them yet more closely than he did; and speak with regret of his mistake at the beginning of his mathematical studies, in applying himself to the works of Descartes and other algebraic writers, before he had considered the elements of Euclid with that attention which so excellent a writer deserves.”

“Though his memory was much decayed,” continues Dr. Pemberton, “he perfectly understood his own writings.” And even this failure of memory, we would suggest, might have been more apparent than real, or, in medical terms, more the result of functional weakness than organic decay. Newton seems never to have confided largely to his memory: and as this faculty manifests the most susceptibility to cultivation; so, in the neglect of due exercise, it more readily and plainly shows a diminution of its powers.

Equanimity and temperance had, indeed, preserved Newton singularly free from all mental and bodily ailment. His hair was, to the last, quite thick, though as white as silver. He never made use of spectacles, and lost but one tooth to the day of his death. He was of middle stature, well-knit, and, in the latter part of his life, somewhat inclined to be corpulent. Mr. Conduit says, “he had a very lively and piercing eye, a comely and gracious aspect, with a fine head of hair, white as silver, without any baldness, and when his peruke was off was a venerable sight.” According to Bishop Atterbury, “in the whole air of his face and make there was nothing of that penetrating sagacity which appears in his compositions. He had something rather languid in his look and manner which did not raise any great expectation in those who did not know him.” Hearne remarks, “Sir Isaac was a man of no very promising aspect. He was a short, well-set man. He was full of thought, and spoke very little in company, so that his conversation was not agreeable. When he rode in his coach, one arm would be out of his coach on one side and the other on the other.” These different accounts we deem easily reconcilable. In the rooms of the Royal Society, in the street, or in mixed assemblages, Newton’s demeanour—always courteous, unassuming and kindly—still had in it the overawings of a profound repose and reticency, out of which the communicative spirit, and the “lively and piercing eye” would only gleam in the quiet and unrestrained freedom of his own fire-side.

“But this I immediately discovered in him,” adds Pemberton, still further, “which at once both surprised and charmed me. Neither his extreme great age, nor his universal reputation had rendered him stiff in opinion, or in any degree elated. Of this I had occasion to have almost daily experience.

The remarks I continually sent him by letters on his Principia, were received with the utmost goodness. These were so far from being any ways displeasing to him, that, on the contrary, it occasioned him to speak many kind things of me to my friends, and to honour me with a public testimony of his good opinion.” A modesty, openness, and generosity, peculiar to the noble and comprehensive spirit of Newton. “Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty,” yet not lifted up by pride nor corrupted by ambition. None, how ever, knew so well as himself the stupendousness of his discoveries in comparison with all that had been previously achieved; and none realized so thoroughly as himself the littleness thereof in comparison with the vast region still unexplored. A short time before his death he uttered this memorable sentiment:—“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” How few ever reach the shore even, much less find “a smoother pebble or a prettier shell!”