A Budget of Paradoxes Volume I Part 12

NEWTON'S DE MUNDI SYSTEMATE LIBER.

A treatise of the system of the world. By Sir Isaac Newton. Translated into English. London, 1728, 8vo.

I think I have a right to one little paradox of my own: I greatly doubt that Newton wrote this book. Castiglione,[290] in his _Newtoni Opuscula_,[291] gives it in the Latin which appeared in 1731,[292] not for the first time; he says _Angli omnes Newtono tribuunt_.[293] It appeared just after Newton's death, without the name of any editor, or any allusion to Newton's {140} recent departure, purporting to be that popular treatise which Newton, at the beginning of the third book of the _Principia_, says he wrote, intending it to be the third book. It is very possible that some observant turnpenny might construct such a treatise as this from the third book, that it might be ready for publication the moment Newton could not disown it. It has been treated with singular silence: the name of the editor has never been given. Rigaud[294] mentions it without a word: I cannot find it in Brewster's _Newton_, nor in the _Biographia Britannica_.

There is no copy in the Catalogue of the Royal Society's Library, either in English or Latin, except in Castiglione. I am open to correction; but I think nothing from Newton's acknowledged works will prove--as laid down in the suspected work--that he took Numa's temple of Vesta, with a central fire, to be intended to symbolize the sun as the center of our system, in the Copernican sense.[295]

Mr. Edleston[296] gives an account of the _lectures_ "de motu corporum,"

and gives the corresponding pages of the _Latin_ "De Systemate Mundi" of 1731. But no one mentions the _English_ of 1728. This English seems to agree with the Latin; but there is a mystery about it. The preface says, "That this work as here published is genuine will so clearly appear by the intrinsic marks it bears, that it will be but losing words and the reader's time to take pains in giving him any other satisfaction." Surely fewer words would have been lost if the prefator had said at once that the work was from the ma.n.u.script preserved at Cambridge. Perhaps it was a mangled copy clandestinely taken and interpreted. {141}

A BACONIAN CONTROVERSY.

Lord Bacon not the author of "The Christian Paradoxes," being a reprint of "Memorials of G.o.dliness and Christianity," by Herbert Palmer, B.D.[297] With Introduction, Memoir, and Notes, by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart,[298] Kenross. (Private circulation, 1864).

I insert the above in this place on account of a slight connection with the last. Bacon's Paradoxes,--so attributed--were first published as his in some a.s.serted "Remains," 1648.[299] They were admitted into his works in 1730, and remain there to this day. The t.i.tle is "The Character of a believing Christian, set forth in paradoxes and seeming contradictions."

The following is a specimen:

"He believes three to be one and one to be three; a father not to be older than his son; a son to be equal with his father; and one proceeding from both to be equal with both: he believes three persons in one nature, and two natures in one person.... He believes the G.o.d of all grace to have been angry with one that never offended Him; and that G.o.d that hates sin to be reconciled to himself though sinning continually, and never making or being able to make Him any satisfaction. He believes a most just G.o.d to have punished a most just person, and to have justified himself, though a most unG.o.dly sinner. He believes himself freely pardoned, and yet a sufficient satisfaction was made for him."

Who can doubt that if Bacon had written this it must have been wrong? Many writers, especially on the {142} Continent, have taken him as sneering at (Athanasian) Christianity right and left. Many Englishmen have taken him to be quite in earnest, and to have produced a body of edifying doctrine. More than a century ago the Paradoxes were published as a penny tract; and, again, at the same price, in the _Penny Sunday Reader_, vol. vi, No. 148, a few pa.s.sages were omitted, as _too strong_. But all did not agree: in my copy of Peter Shaw's [300] edition (vol. ii, p. 283) the Paradoxes have been cut out by the binder, who has left the backs of the leaves. I never had the curiosity to see whether other copies of the edition have been served in the same way. The Religious Tract Society republished them recently in _Selections from the Writings of Lord Bacon_, (no date; bad plan; about 1863, I suppose). No omissions were made, so far as I find.

I never believed that Bacon wrote this paper; it has neither his _sparkle_ nor his idiom. I stated my doubts even before I heard that Mr. Spedding, one of Bacon's editors, was of the same mind. (_Athenaeum_, July 16, 1864).

I was little moved by the wide consent of orthodox men: for I knew how Bacon, Milton, Newton, Locke, etc., were always claimed as orthodox until almost the present day. Of this there is a remarkable instance.

LOCKE AND SOCINIANISM.

Among the books which in my younger day were in some orthodox publication lists--I think in the list of the Christian Knowledge Society, but I am not sure--was Locke's [301] "Reasonableness of Christianity." It seems to have come down from the eighteenth century, when the battle was belief in Christ against unbelief, _simpliciter_, as the {143} logicians say. Now, if ever there was a Socinian[302] book in the world, it is this work of Locke.

"These two," says Locke, "faith and repentance, i.e., believing Jesus to be the Messiah, and a good life, are the indispensable conditions of the new covenant, to be performed by all those who would obtain eternal life." All the book is amplification of this doctrine. Locke, in this and many other things, followed Hobbes, whose doctrine, in the Leviathan, is _fidem, quanta ad salutem necessaria est, contineri in hoc articulo, Jesus est Christus_.[303] For this Hobbes was called an atheist, which {144} many still believe him to have been: some of his contemporaries called him, rightly, a Socinian. Locke was known for a Socinian as soon as his work appeared: Dr. John Edwards,[304] his a.s.sailant, says he is "Socinianized all over." Locke, in his reply, says "there is not one word of Socinianism in it:" and he was right: the positive Socinian doctrine has _not one word of Socinianism in it_; Socinianism consists in omissions. Locke and Hobbes did not dare _deny_ the Trinity: for such a thing Hobbes might have been roasted, and Locke might have been strangled. Accordingly, the well-known way of teaching Unitarian doctrine was the collection of the a.s.serted essentials of Christianity, without naming the Trinity, etc. This is the plan Newton followed, in the papers which have at last been published.[305]

So I, for one, thought little about the general tendency of orthodox writers to claim Bacon by means of the Paradoxes. I knew that, in his "Confession of Faith"[306] he is a Trinitarian of a heterodox stamp. His second Person takes human nature before he took flesh, not for redemption, but as a condition precedent of creation. "G.o.d is so holy, pure, and jealous, that it is impossible for him to be pleased in any creature, though the work of his own hands.... [Gen. i. 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31, freely rendered]. But--purposing to become a Creator, and to communicate to his creatures, he ordained in his eternal counsel that one person of the G.o.dhead should be united to one nature, and to one particular of his creatures; that so, in the person of the Mediator, the true ladder might be fixed, whereby G.o.d might {145} descend to his creatures and his creatures might ascend to G.o.d...."

This is republished by the Religious Tract Society, and seems to suit their theology, for they confess to having omitted some things of which they disapprove.

In 1864, Mr. Grosart published his discovery that the Paradoxes are by Herbert Palmer; that they were first published surrept.i.tiously, and immediately afterwards by himself, both in 1645; that the "Remains" of Bacon did not appear until 1648; that from 1645 to 1708, thirteen editions of the "Memorials" were published, all containing the Paradoxes. In spite of this, the Paradoxes were introduced into Bacon's works in 1730, where they have remained.

Herbert Palmer was of good descent, and educated as a Puritan. He was an accomplished man, one of the few of his day who could speak French as well as English. He went into the Church, and was beneficed by Laud,[307] in spite of his puritanism; he sat in the a.s.sembly of Divines, and was finally President of Queens' College, Cambridge, in which post he died, August 13, 1647, in the 46th year of his age.

Mr. Grosart says, speaking of Bacon's "Remains," "All who have had occasion to examine our early literature are aware that it was a common trick to issue imperfect, false, and unauthorized writings under any recently deceased name that might be expected to take. The Puritans, down to John Bunyan, were perpetually expostulating and protesting against such procedure." I have met with instances of all this; but I did not know that there was so much of it: a good collection would be very useful. The work of 1728, attributed to Newton, is likely enough to be one of the cla.s.s.

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Demonstration de l'immobilitez de la Terre.... Par M. de la Jonchere,[308] Ingenieur Francais. Londres, 1728, 8vo.

A synopsis which is of a line of argument belonging to the beginning of the preceding century.

TWO FORGOTTEN CIRCLE SQUARERS.

The Circle squared; together with the Ellipsis and several reflections on it. The finding two geometrical mean proportionals, or doubling the cube geometrically. By Richard Locke[309].... London, no date, probably about 1730, 8vo.

According to Mr. Locke, the circ.u.mference is three diameters, three-fourths the difference of the diameter and the side of the inscribed equilateral triangle, and three-fourths the difference between seven-eighths of the diameter and the side of the same triangle. This gives, he says, 3.18897.

There is an addition to this tract, being an appendix to a book on the longitude.

The Circle squar'd. By Thos. Baxter, Crathorn, Cleaveland, Yorks.h.i.+re.

London, 1732, 8vo.

Here [pi] = 3.0625. No proof is offered.[310]

The longitude discovered by the Eclipses, Occultations, and Conjunctions of Jupiter's planets. By William Whiston. London, 1738.

This tract has, in some copies, the celebrated preface containing the account of Newton's appearance before the Parliamentary Committee on the longitude question, in 1714 {147} (Brewster, ii. 257-266). This "historical preface," is an insertion and is dated April 28, 1741, with four additional pages dated August 10, 1741. The short "preface" is by the publisher, John Whiston,[311] the author's son.

THE STEAMs.h.i.+P SUGGESTED.

A description and draught of a new-invented machine for carrying vessels or s.h.i.+ps out of, or into any harbour, port, or river, against wind and tide, or in a calm. For which, His Majesty has granted letters patent, for the sole benefit of the author, for the s.p.a.ce of fourteen years. By Jonathan Hulls.[312] London: printed for the author, 1737.

Price sixpence (folding plate and pp. 48, beginning from t.i.tle).

(I ought to have entered this tract in its place. It is so rare that its existence was once doubted. It is the earliest description of steam-power applied to navigation. The plate shows a barge, with smoking funnel, and paddles at the stem, towing a s.h.i.+p of war. The engine, as described, is Newcomen's.[313]

In 1855, John Sheepshanks,[314] so well known as a friend of Art and a public donor, reprinted this tract, in fac-simile, from his own copy; twenty-seven copies of the original 12mo size, and twelve on old paper, small 4to. I have an original copy, wanting the plate, and with "Price sixpence" carefully erased, to the honor of the book.[315]

{148}

It is not known whether Hulls actually constructed a boat.[316] In all probability his tract suggested to Symington, as Symington[317] did to Fulton.)

THE NEWTONIANS ATTACKED.

Le vrai systeme de physique generale de M. Isaac Newton expose et a.n.a.lyse en parallele avec celui de Descartes. By Louis Castel[318]

[Jesuit and F.R.S.] Paris, 1743, 4to.

This is an elaborate correction of Newton's followers, and of Newton himself, who it seems did not give his own views with perfect fidelity.

Father Castel, for instance, a.s.sures us that Newton placed the sun _at rest_ in the center of the system. Newton left the sun to arrange that matter with the planets and the rest of the universe. In this volume of 500 pages there is right and wrong, both clever.