Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/361

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SIR ISAAC NEWTON 349 wished. Complaint followed, with little out- breaks of temper on both sides. Newton was at the summit of his fame, and Flamsteed saw the vast importance of his own labors, then unappreciated, but since fully allowed. Halley, devoted to Newton, embittered the difference. The quarrel culminated in the publication, under Halley's name, of Flamsteed's celestial observations, which Halley had mutilated. (See FLAMSTEED.) Newton received in 1695 the appointment of warden of the mint, worth between 500 and 600 a year; and in 1699 he was promoted to the mastership of the mint, worth 1,200 to 1,500, which office he held during the rest of his life. The chancel- lor of the exchequer declared that he could not have carried on the recoinage of 1699 without his assistance. On his promotion he appointed Mr. Winston to be his deputy at Cambridge, with the full profits of the place ; and in 1V01 he resigned the chair. In 1699 he was elected foreign associate of the academy of sciences at Paris. He was chosen president of the royal society in 1703, and annually reflected during his life. In 1705 he was knighted by Queen Anne. In 1713 he communicated a paper to the royal society on the different kinds of years in use among the nations of antiquity ; it was published in the " Gentleman's Magazine " for January, 1715, and the original is in the British museum. In 1717 he prepared two reports on the state of the coinage, which were laid before the houses of parliament. They were followed by a proclamation in December, 1717, reducing the value of guineas from 21s. 6d. to 21s. In 1705 began the famous dispute with Leibnitz. Newton and Leibnitz, it is now clear, were both original inventors of the in- finitesimal analysis, Newton being the earlier. But Leibnitz published his method in 1684, while Newton's did not appear till 1687. The geometry of the former spread rapidly over Europe ; he was considered as the sole inventor, and Newton, in the first edition of the Princi- pia, acknowledged his claims as an indepen- dent inventor. In 1699 a remark was dropped in the royal society casting suspicion upon the originality of Leibnitz's discovery. Leibnitz replied in the Leipsic Journal without asperity, asserting his claim. On Jan. 1, 1705, the same publication criticised with marked severity Newton's " Quadrature of Curves," then lately published, in which the method of fluxions was for the first time announced to the world, as- serting in effect that the fluxionary method was not an original discovery. Newton and his friends were justly indignant, and Keill, an astronomer, undertook his defence, but was betrayed into doing similar injustice to Leib- nitz, charging him in effect with having bor- rowed his calculus from hints thrown out by Newton. Leibnitz appealed to the royal so- ciety, which appointed a commission in the premises. Their report, which vindicates Newton's claims, forms what is called the Commercium Epistolicum (1712); for the con- tents of which, as also of a second edition with a Review entitled Recemio (1722), Newton was himself fully responsible. In a new edition, edited by MM. Biot and Lefort (4to, Paris, 1856), this report is shown to be in many points unfair. The dissension continued with- out abatement up to Leibnitz's death (1716). Newton published soon after what Biot char- acterizes as a " bitter refutation." In the first edition of the Principia (book ii., scholium to lemma 2) justice was done to Leibnitz's claim. In the third edition (1725) another scholium is substituted, in which Leibnitz's name is not mentioned. During his residence at Cam- bridge Newton was in the habit, as he ex- presses it, " of refreshing himself with history and chronology when he was weary with other studies." Hence grew up a system of chronol- ogy, which however was very imperfect and only existed in separate papers till the prin- cess of Wales (afterward queen consort of George II.), who enjoyed the privilege of his conversation during the latter part of his life, requested a copy of it for her private use. The manuscript after some years was printed in Paris (1725) surreptitiously, and involved New- ton in an annoying controversy, in consequence of which he was induced to prepare a larger work, which was interrupted by his death. It appeared toward the end of 1727, under the title, " The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms amended, to which is prefixed a Short Chron- icle from the first Memory of Things in Eu- rope to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great." His system was based on the astronomical observations of the ancients. Previous to 1692 Newton was known by the appellation of an "excellent divine." It is therefore probable that his posthumous papers on religious subjects were composed in the prime of life, at Cambridge. His "Observa- tions on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John " appeared in London in 1733 (4to). His "Historical Account of two Notable Corruptions of Scripture," main- ly composed prior to 1690, but finished in that year, was first published in 1754, under the erroneous title of " Two Letters from Sir Isaac Newton to M. Le Clerc." In some catalogues of Newton's works another edition is men- tioned, entitled " Two Letters to Mr. Clarke, late Divinity Professor of the Remonstrants in Holland" (1734). It appears to have been first published entire in Horsley's edition of Newton's works, under the title, "Historical Account of two Notable Corruptions of Scrip- ture, in a Letter to a Friend." That friend was probably Locke. In this work he con- siders the two noted texts, 1 John v. 7, and 1 Tim. iii. 16. The former he attempts to prove spurious, and the latter he considers a false reading. The publication of several of his private papers in Sir David Brewster's memoir places the fact of his entertaining Arian opin- ions beyond question. About the beginning of 1691 Locke contemplated going to Holland,