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
