He was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, on
December
25th, 1642.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v18 - Mom to Old
Then,
when friends wrote me on the subject, I either did not deny
or I confessed my state of mind, according to the character and
need of their letters. Sometimes in the case of intimate friends,
whom I should otherwise have been leaving in ignorance of what
others knew on every side of them, I invited the question.
## p. 10608 (#480) ##########################################
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JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
And here comes in another point for explanation. While I
was fighting in Oxford for the Anglican Church, then indeed I
was very glad to make converts; and though I never broke away
from that rule of my mind (as I may call it) of which I have
already spoken, of finding disciples rather than seeking them, yet
that I made advances to others in a special way, I have no doubt;
this came to an end, however, as soon as I fell into misgivings
as to the true ground to be taken in the controversy. For then,
when I gave up my place in the Movement, I ceased from any
such proceedings; and my utmost endeavor was to tranquillize
such persons, especially those who belonged to the new school, as
were unsettled in their religious views, and as I judged, hasty
in their conclusions. This went on till 1843; but at that date, as
soon as I turned my face Romeward, I gave up, as far as ever
was possible, the thought of, in any respect and in any shape,
acting upon others. Then I myself was simply my own concern.
How could I in any sense direct others, who had to be guided in
so momentous a matter myself? How could I be considered in
a position, even to say a word to them, one way or the other?
How could I presume to unsettle them as I was unsettled, when
I had no
means of bringing them out of such unsettlement?
And if they were unsettled already, how could I point to them
a place of refuge, when I was not sure that I should choose it
for myself? My only line, my only duty, was to keep simply to
my own case. I recollected Pascal's words, "Je mourrai seul” [I
will die alone]. I deliberately put out of my thoughts all other
works and claims, and said nothing to any one, unless I was
obliged.
But this brought upon me a great trouble. In the news-
papers there were continual reports about my intentions; I did
not answer them: presently strangers or friends wrote, begging
to be allowed to answer them; and if I still kept to my resolu-
tion and said nothing, then I was thought to be mysterious, and
a prejudice was excited against me. But what was far worse,
there were a number of tender, eager hearts, of whom I knew
nothing at all, who were watching me, wishing to think as I
thought, and to do as I did, if they could but find it out; who
in consequence were distressed that in so solemn a matter they
could not see what was coming, and who heard reports about me
this way or that, on a first day and on a second; and felt the
weariness of waiting, and the sickness of delayed hope, and did
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JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10609
not understand that I was as perplexed as they were, and being
of more sensitive complexion of mind than myself, they were
made ill by the suspense. And they too, of course, for the time
thought me mysterious and inexplicable. I ask their pardon as
far as I was really unkind to them.
I left Oxford for good on Monday, February 23d, 1846. On
the Saturday and Sunday before, I was in my house at Little-
more simply by myself, as I had been for the first day or two
when I had originally taken possession of it. I slept on Sunday
night at my dear friend's, Mr. Johnson's, at the Observatory.
Various friends came to see the last of me: Mr. Copeland, Mr.
Church, Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, and Mr. Lewis. Dr. Pusey too
came up to take leave of me; and I called on Dr. Ogle, one
of my very oldest friends, for he was my private tutor when I
was an undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first college,
Trinity, which was so dear to me, and which held on its founda-
tion so many who had been kind to me both when I was a boy,
and all through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind
to me. There used to be much snapdragon growing on the
walls opposite my freshman's rooms there; and I had for years
taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence, even unto
death, in my University.
On the morning of the 23d I left the Observatory. I have
never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires as they are seen
from the railway.
FROM the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no
further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying
this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I
have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have
had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart
whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I
never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on
my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in
my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental
truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more
fervor: but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and
my happiness on that score remains to this day without inter-
ruption.
Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional arti-
cles which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them
I believed already, but not any one of them was a trial to me.
XVIII-664
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JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
I made a profession of them upon my reception with the greatest
ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now.
I am
far of course from denying that every article of the Christian
Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset
with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that for my-
self I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very
sensitive of the difficulties of Religion: I am as sensitive of
them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connec-
tion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and
multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand doubting
the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand diffi-
culties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject;
difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may
be many difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of diffi-
culties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations
with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work
out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not
given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or
that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of
faith, the being of God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed
with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most
power.
THE LOCUSTS
From Callista'
THEY
Τ
HEY moved right on like soldiers in their ranks, stopping at
nothing and straggling for nothing; they carried a broad
furrow or wheal all across the country, black and loath-
some, while it was as green and smiling on each side of them
and in front as it had been before they came. Before them, in
the language of the prophets, was a paradise, and behind them a
desert. They are daunted by nothing; they surmount walls and
hedges, and enter inclosed gardens or inhabited houses. A rare
and experimental vineyard has been planted in a sheltered grove.
The high winds of Africa will not commonly allow the light trel-
lis or the slim pole; but here the lofty poplar of Campania has
been possible, on which the vine plant mounts so many yards
into the air, that the poor grape-gatherers bargain for a funeral
pile and a tomb as one of the conditions of their engagement.
The locusts have done what the winds and lightning could not
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JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10611
do, and the whole promise of the vintage, leaves and all, is gone,
and the slender stems are left bare. There is another yard, less
uncommon, but still tended with more than common care; each
plant is kept within due bounds by a circular trench around it,
and by upright canes on which it is to trail; in an hour the
solicitude and long toil of the vine-dresser are lost, and his pride
humbled. There is a smiling farm; another sort of vine of re-
markable character is found against the farmhouse. This vine
springs from one ro and has clothed and matted with its many
branches the four walls. The whole of it is covered thick with
long clusters, which another month will ripen. On every grape
and leaf there is a locust. Into the dry caves and pits, carefully
strewed with straw, the harvest-men have (safely, as they thought
just now) been lodging the far-famed African wheat. One grain
or root shoots up into ten, twenty, fifty, eighty, nay, three or
four hundred stalks; sometimes the stalks have two ears apiece,
and these shoot off into a number of lesser ones. These stores
are intended for the Roman populace, but the locusts have been
beforehand with them. The small patches of ground belonging
to the poor peasants up and down the country, for raising the
turnips, garlic, barley, watermelons, on which they live, are the
prey of these glutton invaders as much as the choicest vines
and olives. Nor have they any reverence for the villa of the
civic decurion or the Roman official. The neatly arranged
kitchen garden, with its cherries, plums, peaches, and apricots, is
a waste; as the slaves sit round, in the kitchen in the first court,
at their coarse evening meal, the room is filled with the invading
force, and news comes to them that the enemy has fallen upon
the apples and pears in the basement, and is at the same time
plundering and sacking the preserves of quince and pomegranate,
and reveling in the jars of precious oil of Cyprus and Mendes
in the store-rooms. They come up to the walls of Sicca, and
are flung against them into the ditch. Not a moment's hesitation
or delay: they recover their footing, they climb up the wood or
stucco, they surmount the parapet, or they have entered in at
the windows, filling the apartments and the most private and
luxurious chambers; not one or two, like stragglers at forage or
rioters after a victory, but in order of battle, and with the array
of an army. Choice plants or flowers about the impluvia and
xysti, for ornament or refreshment,- myrtles, oranges, pome-
granates, the rose and the carnation,- have disappeared. They
## p. 10612 (#484) ##########################################
10612
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
dim the bright marbles of the walls and the gilding of the ceil
ings. They enter the triclinium in the midst of the banquet;
they crawl over the viands and spoil what they do not devour.
Unrelaxed by success and by enjoyment, onward they go; a secret
mysterious instinct keeps them together, as if they had a king
over them. They move along the floor in so strange an order
that they seem to be a tessellated pavement themselves, and to
be the artificial embellishment of the place; so true are their
lines, and so perfect is the pattern they describe. Onward they
go, to the market, to the temple sacrifices, to the bakers' stores,
to the cook-shops, to the confectioners, to the druggists: nothing
comes amiss to them; wherever man has aught to eat or drink,
there are they, reckless of death, strong of appetite, certain of
conquest.
CALLISTA AND AGELLIUS
From Callista'
F°
OR an instant tears seemed about to start from Callista's eyes;
but she repressed the emotion, if it was such, and answered
with impetuosity:-"Your Master! - who is your Master?
what know I of your Master? what have you ever told me of
your Master?
I suppose it is an esoteric doctrine which I am
not worthy to know; but so it is: here you have been again and
again, and talked freely of many things, yet I am in as much
darkness about your Master as if I had never seen you. I know
he died; I know too that Christians say he lives. In some for-
tunate island, I suppose; for when I have asked, you have got
rid of the subject as best you could. You have talked about
your law and your various duties, and what you consider right,
and what is forbidden, and of some of the old writers of your
sect, and of the Jews before them; but if, as you imply, my
wants and aspirations are the same as yours, what have you
done towards satisfying them? what have you done for that
Master towards whom you now propose to lead me? No! " she
continued, starting up: "you have watched those wants and as-
pirations for yourself, not for him; you have taken interest in
them, you have cherished them, as if you were the author, you
the object of them. You profess to believe in One True God, and
to reject every other; and now you are implying that the Hand,
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JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10613
the Shadow of that God, is on my mind and heart. Who is this
God? where? how? in what? O Agellius, you have stood in
the way of him, ready to speak of yourself, using him as a
means to an end. ”
"O Callista," said Agellius in an agitated voice, when he
could speak, "do my ears hear aright? do you really wish to be
taught who the true God is? "
"No; mistake me not," she cried passionately: "I have no
such wish. I could not be of your religion. Ye gods! how have
I been deceived! I thought every Christian was like Chione.
I thought there could not be a cold Christian. Chione spoke as
if a Christian's first thoughts were good-will to others; as if
his state were of such blessedness, that his dearest heart's wish
was to bring others into it. Here is a man, who, so far from
feeling himself blest, thinks I can bless him; comes to me,—me,
Callista, an herb of the field, a poor weed, exposed to every
wind of heaven, and shriveling before the fierce sun, to me he
comes to repose his heart upon. But as for any blessedness he
has to show me, why, since he does not feel any himself, no
wonder he has none to give away. I thought a Christian was
superior to time and place; but all is hollow. Alas, alas! I am
young in life to feel the force of that saying with which sages
go out of it, 'Vanity and hollowness! ' Agellius, when I first
heard you were a Christian, how my heart beat! I thought of
her who was gone; and at first I thought I saw her in you, as
if there had been some magical sympathy between you and her;
and I hoped that from you I might have learned more of that
strange strength which my nature needs, and which she told
me she possessed. Your words, your manner, your looks, were
altogether different from others who came near me. But so it
was: you came, and you went, and came again; I thought it
reserve, I thought it timidity, I thought it the caution of a per-
secuted sect: but oh my disappointment, when first I saw in you
indications that you were thinking of me only as others think,
and felt towards me as others may feel; that you were aiming
at me, not at your God; that you had much to tell of yourself,
but nothing of him! Time was I might have been led to wor-
ship you, Agellius: you have hindered it by worshiping me. »
-
## p. 10614 (#486) ##########################################
10614
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
MOTHER AND SON
From Loss and Gain'
CHA
HARLES leapt from the gig with a beating heart, and ran up
to his mother's room. She was sitting by the fire at her
work when he entered; she held out her hand coldly to
him, and he sat down. Nothing was said for a little while; then,
without leaving off her occupation, she said, “Well, Charles, and
so you are leaving us. Where and how do you propose to employ
yourself when you have entered upon your new life? "
Charles answered that he had not yet turned his mind to the
consideration of anything but the great step on which everything
else depended.
There was another silence; then she said, "You won't find
anywhere such friends as you have had at home, Charles. " Pres-
ently she continued, "You have had everything in your favor,
Charles: you have been blessed with talents, advantages of edu-
cation, easy circumstances; many a deserving young man has to
scramble on as he can. "
Charles answered that he was deeply sensible how much he
owed in temporal matters to Providence, and that it was only at
His bidding that he was giving them up.
"We all looked up to you, Charles; perhaps we made too
much of you: well, God be with you; you have taken your line. "
Poor Charles said that no one could conceive what it cost him
to give up what was so very dear to him, what was part of him-
self; there was nothing on earth which he prized like his home.
"Then why do you leave us? " she said quickly: "you must
have your way; you do it, I suppose, because you like it. "
"Oh really, my dear mother," cried he, "if you saw my heart!
You know in Scripture how people were obliged in the Apostles'
times to give up all for Christ. "
"We are heathens, then," she replied; "thank you, Charles, I
am obliged to you for this:" and she dashed away a tear from
her eye.
Charles was almost beside himself: he did not know what to
say; he stood up and leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece, sup-
porting his head on his hand.
>>
"Well, Charles," she continued, still going on with her work,
"perhaps the day will come her voice faltered; "your dear
father-> she put down her work.
――――
## p. 10615 (#487) ##########################################
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10615
"It is useless misery," said Charles: "why should I stay?
Good-by for the present, my dearest mother. I leave you in
good hands, not kinder, but better than mine; you lose me, you
gain another. Farewell for the present: we will meet when you
will, when you call; it will be a happy meeting. "
He threw himself on his knees, and laid his cheek on her
lap: she could no longer resist him; she hung over him and
began to smooth down his hair as she had done when he was
a child. At length scalding tears began to fall heavily upon his
face and neck; he bore them for a while, then started up, kissed
her cheek impetuously, and rushed out of the room. In a few
seconds he had seen and had torn himself from his sisters, and
was in his gig again by the side of his phlegmatic driver, dan-
Icing slowly up and down on his way to Collumpton.
D
THE SEPARATION OF FRIENDS
From Lyra Apostolica >
O NOT their souls who 'neath the Altar wait
Until their second birth,
The gift of patience need, as separate
From their first friends of earth?
Not that earth's blessings are not all outshone
By Eden's angel flame,
But that earth knows not yet the dead has won
That crown which was his aim.
For when he left it, 'twas a twilight scene
About his silent bier,
A breathless struggle, faith and sight between,
And Hope and sacred Fear.
Fear startled at his pains and dreary end,
Hope raised her chalice high,
And the twin sisters still his shade attend,
Viewed in the mourner's eye.
So day by day for him from earth ascends,
As dew in summer even,
The speechless intercession of his friends
Toward the azure heaven.
Ah! dearest, with a word he could dispel
All questioning, and raise.
Our hearts to rapture, whispering all was well,
And turning prayer to praise.
## p. 10616 (#488) ##########################################
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JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
And other secrets too he could declare,
By patterns all divine,
His earthly creed retouching here and there,
And deepening every line.
Dearest! he longs to speak, as I to know,
And yet we both refrain:
It were not good; a little doubt below,
And all will soon be plain.
THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD
(AT SEA, JUNE 16TH, 1833)
L'
EAD, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on!
-
The night is dark, and I am far from home -
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene,-one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
AFTER DEATH
From The Dream of Gerontius>
I
WENT to sleep, and now I am refreshed:
A strange refreshment; for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,—
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
## p. 10617 (#489) ##########################################
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10617
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream: yes, some one softly said,
"He's gone;" and then a sigh went round the room;
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry "Subvenite"; and they knelt in prayer —
I seem to hear him still, but thin and low
And fainter and more faint the accents come,
As at an ever-widening interval.
Ah! whence is this? What is this severance?
This silence pours a solitariness
Into the very essence of my soul;
And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Hath something too of sternness and of pain,
For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring
By a strange introversion, and perforce
I now begin to feed upon myself,
Because I have naught else to feed upon.
Am I alive or dead? I am not dead,
But in the body still; for I possess
A sort of confidence, which clings to me,
That each particular organ holds its place
As heretofore, combining with the rest
Into one symmetry, that wraps me round
And makes me man; and surely I could move,
Did I but will it, every part of me.
And yet I cannot to my sense bring home,
By very trial, that I have the power.
'Tis strange: I cannot stir a hand or foot,
I cannot make my fingers or my lips
By mutual pressure witness each to each,
Nor by the eyelid's instantaneous stroke
Assure myself I have a body still.
Nor do I know my very attitude,
Nor if I stand, or lie, or sit, or kneel.
So much I know, not knowing how I know,
That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,
Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.
Or I or it is rushing on the wings
Of light or lightning, on an onward course,
And we e'en now are million miles apart.
Yet is this peremptory severance
Wrought out in lengthening measurements of space,
Which grow and multiply by speed and time?
## p. 10618 (#490) ##########################################
10618
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
Or am I traversing infinity
By endless subdivision, hurrying back
From finite towards infinitesimal,
Thus dying out of the expanded world?
Another marvel: some one has me fast
Within his ample palm; 'tis not a grasp
Such as they use on earth, but all around
Over the surface of my subtle being,
As though I were a sphere, and capable
To be accosted thus, a uniform
And gentle pressure tells me I am not
Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.
And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth
I cannot of that music rightly say
Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones.
Oh, what a heart-subduing melody!
ANGEL
Y WORK is done,
My task is o'er,
Μ'
And so I come,
Taking it home;
For the crown is won,
Alleluia,
For evermore.
My Father gave
In charge to me
This child of earth
E'en from its birth,
To serve and save,
Alleluia,
And saved is he.
This child of clay
To me was given,
To rear and train
By sorrow and pain
In the narrow way,
Alleluia,
From earth to heaven.
## p. 10618 (#491) ##########################################
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BUS
SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
B Crasch
## p. 10618 (#493) ##########################################
LAL ST
(
STON
## p. 10618 (#494) ##########################################
NEWTON
## p. 10619 (#495) ##########################################
10619
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
(1642-1727)
T HAS been said that the history of Sir Isaac Newton is also
the history of science; yet the character of his life and work
does not entirely exclude him from the category of men of
letters. While his great book the 'Principia' is written in Latin and
treats of mathematics, its tremendous scope and magnificent revela-
tions entitle it to be placed without incongruity among those works
which, like 'Paradise Lost' or the 'Divine Comedy,' have widened
men's outlook into the universe. Milton and Dante dealt with the
spiritual order of creation, Sir Isaac Newton with the material; yet
to those who perceive an almost mystical significance in numbers,—
to whom mathematics are, in a sense, gateways to the unseen,- the
author of the 'Principia' and of the Treatise on Optics' will seem
scarcely less a teacher than the poets.
The life of Sir Isaac Newton, in its harmony, in the smoothness
of its course, in the perfection of its development, seems singularly
expressive of the science to which it was dedicated. From the time
when as a village boy he made water-wheels and kite-lanterns for
his companions, to the hour when full of years and honors he passed
away, the life of Newton was a series of orderly progresses towards a
fixed goal.
He was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, on December 25th, 1642.
His father, who had died before his birth, had been lord and farmer
of the little manor of Woolsthorpe. Newton's mother designed that
he should perform the same office, removing him from Grantham
School for this purpose when he was about fifteen years old. New-
ton soon showed that the yeoman's life was not congenial to him.
He would read a book under a hedge, or construct a water-wheel
for the meadow brook, while the sheep strayed and the cattle were
treading down the corn. He was therefore sent back to the school,
where he had already earned a reputation for industry. If the legend
be true, his first stimulus to study was a well-directed kick in the
stomach delivered by the boy next above him in class. It was char-
acteristic of his gentle nature that the only path of revenge open
to him was through his superior intellect. From Grantham School,
Newton went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in the year 1660. His
mathematical genius soon manifested itself. About the year 1663 he
## p. 10620 (#496) ##########################################
10620
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
invented the formula known as the Binomial Theorem, by which he
afterwards established his method of fluxions. He had been admitted
to Cambridge as a subsizar. He became a scholar in 1664, and in
1665 he took his degree as Bachelor of Arts. In 1667 he was made
Junior Fellow, and in 1668 he took his Master of Arts degree, and
was appointed to a Senior Fellowship. In 1669 he became Lucasian
professor of mathematics. In the eight years between Newton's ad-
mission to the University and his promotion to this chair, the germs
of his great discoveries had come into existence. During his long
after life they were but brought to a perfect development. The
keystone of the 'Principia,' the principle of Universal Gravitation,-
that every particle of matter is attracted by or gravitates to every
other particle of matter with a force inversely proportional to the
squares of their distances, this principle had suggested itself to New-
ton as early as 1666; but the great work in which it was embodied
was not presented to the Royal Society until 1687. The Treatise
on Optics' was based on Newton's Cambridge experiments with the
prism and with the telescope, which had led to his being made a
member of the Royal Society in 1672. He was obliged to contend
with the most noted scientists of his time for the principle of this
book, that light is not homogeneous but consists of rays, some of
which are more refrangible than others. His triumph was as much
a matter of course as the workings of natural law. His contempo-
raries accepted his conclusions when they realized that he was more
deeply in the secret of the universe than any man had ever been.
The honors accorded to him were numerous. In 1688 he was
elected by his university to the Convention Parliament. In 1696 he
was made Warden, and in 1699 Master of the Mint. In 1701 he was
again returned to Parliament. He was made president of the Royal
Society in 1703. In 1705 he was knighted by Queen Anne. Upon
his death in 1727, he was buried in Westminster Abbey in the state
befitting his princely endowments.
The words of Newton shortly before his death, that he seemed to
himself "like a boy playing on the sea-shore, diverting himself in
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordi-
nary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him,"
are significant of his habitual humility and reverence. His soul was
childlike in the presence of mysteries to which he held one key.
His bequests to posterity are not only his stupendous discoveries, but
the example of the scientific temper of mind which is positive rather
than negative, and which seeks a spiritual order behind the veil of
matter.
## p. 10621 (#497) ##########################################
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
10621
LETTER TO FRANCIS ASTOR IN 1669
INCE in your letter you give me so much liberty of spending
S my judgment about what may be to your advantage in
traveling, I shall do it more freely than perhaps otherwise.
would have been decent. First, then, I will lay down some gen-
eral rules, most of which, I believe, you have considered already:
but if any of them be new to you, they may excuse the rest; if
none at all, yet is my punishment more in writing than yours in
reading.
When you come into any fresh company:-
:-1. Observe their
humors. 2. Suit your own carriage thereto, by which insinuation
you will make their converse more free and open. 3. Let your
discourse be more in queries and doubtings than peremptory as-
sertions or disputings; it being the design of travelers to learn,
not to teach. Besides it will persuade your acquaintance that
you have the greater esteem of them, and so make them more
ready to communicate what they know to you; whereas nothing
sooner occasions disrespect and quarrels than peremptoriness.
You will find little or no advantage in seeming wiser or much
more ignorant than your company. 4. Seldom discommend any-
thing though never so bad, or do it but moderately, lest you be
unexpectedly forced to an unhandsome retraction. It is safer to
commend anything more than it deserves, than to discommend a
thing so much as it deserves; for commendations meet not so
often with oppositions, or at least are not usually so ill resented
by men that think otherwise, as discommendations: and you will
insinuate into men's favor by nothing sooner than seeming to
approve and commend what they like; but beware of doing it by
comparison. 5. If you be affronted, it is better, in a foreign
country, to pass it by in silence and with a jest, though with
some dishonor, than to endeavor revenge: for in the first case,
your credit's ne'er the worse when you return into England, or
come into other company that have not heard of the quarrel;
but in the second case, you may bear the marks of the quarrel
while you live, if you outlive it at all. But if you find yourself
unavoidably engaged, 'tis best I think, if you can command your
passion and language, to keep them pretty evenly at some cer-
tain moderate pitch; not much heightening them to exasperate
your adversary, or provoke his friends, nor letting them grow
overmuch dejected to make him insult. In a word, if you can
## p. 10622 (#498) ##########################################
10622
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
keep reason above passion, that and watchfulness will be your
best defendants. To which purpose you may consider, that
though such excuses as this-He provoked me so much I could
not forbear-may pass among friends, yet amongst strangers
they are insignificant, and only argue a traveler's weakness.
To these I may add some general heads for inquiries or
observations, such as at present I can think on. As,-1. To
observe the policies, wealth, and State affairs of nations, so far
as a solitary traveler may conveniently do. 2. Their impositions
upon all sorts of people, trades, or commodities, that are remark-
able. 3. Their laws and customs, how far they differ from ours
4. Their trades and arts, wherein they excel or come short of us
in England. 5. Such fortifications as you shall meet with, their
fashion, strength, and advantages for defense, and other such
military affairs as are considerable. 6. The power and respect
belonging to their degrees of nobility or magistracy.
7. It
will not be time misspent to make a catalogue of the names
and excellencies of those men that are most wise, learned, or
esteemed in any nation. 8. Observe the mechanism and manner
of guiding ships. 9. Observe the products of nature in several
places, especially in mines, with the circumstances of mining and
of extracting metals or minerals out of their ore, and of refining,
them; and if you meet with any transmutations out of their own
species into another (as out of iron into copper, out of any
metal into quicksilver, out of one salt into another, or into an
insipid body, etc. ), those above all will be worth your noting,
being the most luciferous, and many times lucriferous experi-
ments too, in philosophy. 10. The prices of diet and other
things. 11. And the staple commodities of places.
These generals (such as at present I could think of), if they
will serve for nothing else, yet they may assist you in drawing
up a model to regulate your travels by. As for particulars, these
that follow are all that I can now think of; —viz. , I. Whether
at Schemnitium in Hungary (where there are mines of gold,
copper, iron, vitriol, antimony, etc. ) they change iron into copper
by dissolving it in a vitriolate water, which they find in cavities.
of rocks in the mines, and then melting the slimy solution in a
strong fire, which in the cooling proves copper. The like is said
to be done in other places which I cannot now remember; per-
haps too it may be done in Italy. For about twenty or thirty
years agone there was a certain vitriol came from thence (called
## p. 10623 (#499) ##########################################
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
10623
Roman vitriol), but of a nobler virtue than that which is now
called by that name; which vitriol is not now to be gotten,
because perhaps they make a greater gain by some such trick
as turning iron into copper with it than by selling it. 2. Whether
in Hungary, Sclavonia, Bohemia, near the town Eila, or at the
mountains of Bohemia near Silesia, there be rivers whose waters
are impregnated with gold; perhaps, the gold being dissolved by
some corrosive water like aqua regis, and the solution carried
along with the stream that runs through the mines. And whether
the practice of laying mercury in the rivers, till it be tinged
with gold, and then straining the mercury through leather, that
the gold may stay behind, be a secret yet, or openly practiced.
3. There is newly contrived, in Holland, a mill to grind glasses
plane withal, and I think polishing them too; perhaps it will be
worth the while to see it. 4. There is in Holland one Borry,
who some years since was imprisoned by the Pope, to have
extorted from him secrets (as I am told) of great worth, both
as to medicine and profit; but he escaped into Holland, where
they have granted him a guard. I think he usually goes clothed
in green.
Pray inquire what you can of him, and whether his
ingenuity be any profit to the Dutch. You may inform yourself
whether the Dutch have any tricks to keep their ships from be-
ing all worm-eaten in their voyages to the Indies; whether pen-
dulum clocks do any service in finding out the longitude, etc.
I am very weary, and shall not stay to part with a long com-
pliment; only I wish you a good journey, and God be with you.
FROM MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES'
Book iii. of the 'Principia'
TH
HIS most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could
only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelli-
gent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the
centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like
wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One;
especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature
with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes
into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars
should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath
placed those systems at immense distances one from another.
## p. 10624 (#500) ##########################################
10624
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world,
but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont
to be called Lord God, autozpáτwp, or Universal Ruler: for God
is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is
the dominion of God not over his own body, as those imagine
who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants.
The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect:
but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said
to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God, the God of
Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords: but we do not say,
my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of
Gods; we do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: these are titles
which have no respect to servants. The word God usually signi-
fies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of
a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or
imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God.
And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a
living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and from his other per-
fections, that he is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and
infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches
from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity;
he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be
done. He is not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite;
he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present.
He endures for ever, and is everywhere present; and by exist-
ing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space.
Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible
moment of duration is everywhere, certainly the Maker and Lord
of all things cannot be never and nowhere. Every soul that has
perception is, though in different times and in different organs
of sense and motion, still the same indivisible person. There
are given successive parts in duration, coexistent parts in space,
but neither the one nor the other in the person of a man, or
his thinking principle; and much less can they be found in the
thinking substance of God. Every man, so far as he is a thing
that has perception, is one and the same man during his whole
life, in all and each of his organs of sense. God is the same
God, always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not virtually
only, but also substantially; for virtue cannot subsist without sub-
stance. In him are all things contained and moved; yet neither
affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies;
•
## p. 10625 (#501) ##########################################
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
10625
bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. It is
allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by
the same necessity he exists always and everywhere. Whence
also he is all similar,-all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all
power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a manner not
at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner
utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colors, so
have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God per-
ceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body
and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard,
nor touched; nor ought he to be worshiped under the representa-
tion of any corporeal thing. We have ideas of his attributes, but
what the real substance of anything is we know not. In bodies,
we see only their figures and colors, we hear only the sounds,
we touch only their outward surfaces, we smell only the smells,
and taste the savors; but their inward substances are not to be
known either by our senses, or by any reflex act of our minds:
much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of God.
We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances
of things, and final causes: we admire him for his perfections;
but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion:
for we adore him as his servants; and a God without dominion,
providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature.
Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always
and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that
diversity of natural things which we find suited to different.
times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will
of a Being necessarily existing. But by way of allegory, God is
said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to desire, to give,
to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to frame, to work,
to build; for all our notions of God are taken from the ways of
mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has
some likeness however. And thus much concerning God: to dis-
course of whom from the appearances of things does certainly
belong to Natural Philosophy.
Hitherto we have explained the phenomena of the heavens
and of our sea by the power of gravity, but have not yet assigned
the cause of this power. This is certain, that it must proceed
from a cause that penetrates to the very centres of the sun
and planets, without suffering the least diminution of its force;
that operates not according to the quantity of the surfaces of the
XVIII-665
## p. 10626 (#502) ##########################################
10626
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
particles upon which it acts (as mechanical causes use to do),
but according to the quantity of the solid matter which they cou-
tain, and propagates its virtue on all sides to immense distances,
decreasing always in the duplicate proportion of the distances.
Gravitation towards the sun is made up out of the gravitations
towards the several particles of which the body of the sun is
composed: and in receding from the sun decreases accurately in
the duplicate proportion of the distances as far as the orb of
Saturn, as evidently appears from the quiescence of the aphelions
of the planets; nay, and even to the remotest aphelions of the
comets, if those aphelions are also quiescent. But hitherto I
have not been able to discover the cause of those properties
of gravity from phænomena, and I frame no hypotheses: for
whatever is not deduced from the phænomena is to be called
an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical,
whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in
experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular proposi-
tions are inferred from the phænomena, and afterwards rendered
general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the
mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of mo-
tion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough
that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws
which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for
all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea.
And now we might add something concerning a certain most
subtle Spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies: by
the force and action of which Spirit the particles of bodies mutu-
ally attract one another at near distances, and cohere, if contig-
uous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances, as well
repelling as attracting the neighboring corpuscles; and light is
emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all
sensation is excited, and the members of animal bodies move at
the command of the will,-namely, by the vibrations of this
Spirit, mutually propagated along the solid filaments of the nerves,
from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the
brain into the muscles. But these are things that cannot be
explained in few words, nor are we furnished with that suffi-
ciency of experiments which is required to an accurate determi-
nation and demonstration of the laws by which this electric and
elastic Spirit operates.
## p. 10627 (#503) ##########################################
10627
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
(TWELFTH CENTURY)
BY CHARLES HARVEY GENUNG
HE ancient epic poetry of the German race was the outcome
of the vast migration of the peoples that wrecked the Ro-
man Empire and laid the foundations of modern European
civilization. That tremendous cataclysm out of which a new world
slowly rose was accompanied by impressive events, profound emo-
tions, and deeds of lofty heroism, which deeply stirred the imagina-
tion of a poetic people. It is by an inborn impulse that man seeks to
give to his emotions, and to the events that call them forth, poetic
expression and permanence. And thus the excited fancy began at
once to play about the prominent figures and striking moments of
that magnificent drama, and a rich hoard of legendary lore was
stored up for future generations. With the material actually fur-
nished by history, the gods and myths of a remoter age were naïvely
blended. As the traditions grew old and were seen through the haze
of years, successive generations shaped anew their ancestral heritage.
All that is best in the epic traditions of the migration, winnowed by
the centuries and refined by the ideals of a more polished age, is to
be found in the Nibelungenlied. It is the voice of a vigorous and
high-hearted people, speaking in the proud consciousness of its own
substantial worth. Here beside the cruelties of a rude and martial
time are also the rugged virtues which Tacitus praised. Faithfulness,
loyalty, integrity, are the ornaments of the primitive Teutonic char-
acter. Its adaptability and receptivity are also manifest. In contact
with the higher civilization of Rome and the teachings of Christianity,
the Germans assimilated the benefits of both with their own national
traits. The Nibelungenlied marks the culmination of the great pro-
cess which had made Rome a German empire, and had transformed
the invading hordes into a highly civilized people. Not only by rea-
son of its splendid poetic and dramatic power, but also as a monu-
ment in the history of the human race, the Nibelungenlied takes
rank among the great national epics of the world's literature.
If a comparison between the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied as
poems would be a futile piece of literary conjuring,- Goethe called
it a "pernicious endeavor, "-in a large historical sense they present
## p. 10628 (#504) ##########################################
10628
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
some interesting points of resemblance. The invulnerability of Sieg-
fried except where the linden leaf had fallen upon his shoulder, and
the invulnerability of Achilles except in the heel, have a curious
similarity, from which, however, no sure inference can be drawn.
The real points of resemblance lie only in the sources and circum-
stances out of which the poems arose. The creative power of Homer
is incomparably superior to that of the Nibelungen poet; but the
obscure events in the dim dawn of history, of which the legendary
materials used by the poets were the imaginative product, were in
both cases connected with a great migration, in which a young and
powerful people overcame an older and finer one, to receive in turn
the benefits of contact with the civilization it had overthrown. Both
poets had inherited a vast treasury of legends whose historical origin
was already faded, and with these they blended the myths of an age
still more remote; but the manners and customs and geography are
those of their own time, without pretense of antiquarian accuracy.
In the Nibelungenlied the conflict between two civilizations is not the
theme; there are no fine contrasts such as Homer has drawn between
the rude camp life of the Greek warriors and the polished social
organization of the citizens of Troy: but the whole poem is in itself
a witness of the ancient contact and now almost complete amalgama-
tion between the virtues, customs, and beliefs of an old heathen race,
and the softer manners of a cultured, Christianized people. Each
poem stands at the beginning of its literature, and each bears evi-
dence that it is the culmination of a long series of efforts in which
the poetic genius of the people had been working upon its legendary
material, until in the hands of a great artist this material finally took
its monumental and lasting form. Each poem, moreover, marks the
highest point reached by the folk-poetry of the respective races;
with these works art had entered into literature, and thenceforth the
simple songs that flowed from the lips of untaught singers lost their
former dignity. After Homer, though at a long interval, came the
classic age of Greek letters; after the Nibelungenlied, the Minne-
singers and the glories of the Hohenstaufen time. It is furthermore
interesting to observe how in more recent literary history the two
currents of influence represented by the Iliad and by the Nibe-
lungenlied have been brought into contrast. The classicism of French
literature in the age of Louis XIV. was a harking back to the form
and style of the ancient Greeks, and these French models dominated
German literature in the eighteenth century. The revolt of Roman-
ticism against this domination was a harking back to the mediæval
and purely Germanic form and style exemplified in the Nibelungen-
lied. Thirteen centuries after Attila had carried terror to the gates
of Rome, the poetry which had its rise in those great invasions was
## p. 10629 (#505) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10629
made the basis of a patriotic national revival, and upon it the
Romanticists proceeded to create the literature of a new time. Thus
it became the mission of the Nibelungenlied, after lying for more
than two centuries utterly forgotten, to strengthen anew the hearts
of a late generation, which lay prostrate before Napoleon, and to
remind the German people of their ancient greatness. It acted as a
national liberator. Not only was this epic monument their own, but
the heroes whom it celebrates were their ancestors, and in their veins
still flowed the blood of the warriors who had vanquished the legions
of Rome.
For two centuries and a half the Nibelungenlied lay totally neg-
lected and forgotten. This fact is a witness to the demoralizing
nature of the struggles through which Germany was forced to pass
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1500 she stood in
the vanguard of the nations; in 1650 she was but the shadow of a once
mighty people, now completely exhausted physically and intellectu-
ally. Incessant wars, with famine in their wake, had in thirty years
reduced a population of sixteen millions to four, and had cowed and
brutalized the survivors. All continuity with the fine traditions of the
past was broken. In the olden time the legends of the Nibelungen
were widely known. Echoes of them are heard even in the Anglo-
Saxon 'Beowulf. ' In the centuries after the Lied had taken the form
in which we know it, its popularity was universal. But the rise of
the highly elaborated court poetry had already begun to undermine the
taste for the elder epic. The gradual petrifaction of the Minnesang
into the Meistersang contributed to the same end, and the revival of
learning in the brilliant Humanistic movement hastened the process.
The intellectual upheaval known as the Reformation, although out of
line with the Humanistic Renascence, also helped to subvert the old
Germanic traditions, in which so many healthy heathen elements held
a still persistent place. The last person who seems to have taken
any interest in the Nibelungenlied was the Emperor Maximilian, who
had a manuscript of it made. In the sixteenth century there is no
mention of the poem, except by a few obscure historians who used
it superficially and unintelligently as a historical document. Lazius,
the Austrian scholar, quotes several strophes in his 'History of the
Migrations. In the seventeenth century, amid the devastations of the
Thirty Years' War, it had passed so entirely from human ken that
Opitz, the literary dictator of his threadbare time, had no other
knowledge of it than what he had derived from Lazius; and as late
as 1752 Gottsched, the literary leader of an equally threadbare period,
seems not to have known that such a poem had ever existed. Just
four years later the Nibelungenlied was "discovered. " Inspired by
Bodmer's Old German studies, a Swiss physician found at the castle
## p. 10630 (#506) ##########################################
10630
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
of Hohenems a manuscript of the poem which is now regarded as
the oldest form in which the work has come down to us.
It con-
tains the famous 'Klage' or lamentation for the fallen heroes; and
in 1757 Bodmer published the second part under the title of 'Kriem-
hild's Revenge. ' But the work aroused no interest even among those
most interested in the folk-lore and poetry of their native land.
Neither Herder nor Lessing nor Klopstock recognized the national
epic; Wieland too remained untouched, although when the work
came out he was in daily intercourse with Bodmer. Indeed, Bodmer
himself was not aware that he was dealing with a great poem, but
regarded it rather as an antiquarian curiosity. The first complete
edition of the Nibelungenlied appeared in 1782. Professor Myller of
Berlin included it in his collection of 'Poems of the Twelfth, Thir-
teenth, and Fourteenth Centuries. ' The fact that such a collection
had found subscribers at all is evidence that some languid interest
in these early ages had begun to manifest itself; but it was still
an interest of curiosity rather than one of appreciation. A letter
addressed to Myller by Frederick the Great will best illustrate the
attitude of many cultivated readers of that time. Myller had sent a
copy of his work to the King, who, writing from Potsdam in 1784,
said:"Most learned and faithful subject, dear sir: You think a
great deal too much of those poems of the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries which you have had printed, and which you
consider of so much value for the enrichment of the German lan-
guage. In my opinion they are not worth a gunshot, and did not
deserve to be dragged out of the dust of oblivion.
when friends wrote me on the subject, I either did not deny
or I confessed my state of mind, according to the character and
need of their letters. Sometimes in the case of intimate friends,
whom I should otherwise have been leaving in ignorance of what
others knew on every side of them, I invited the question.
## p. 10608 (#480) ##########################################
10608
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
And here comes in another point for explanation. While I
was fighting in Oxford for the Anglican Church, then indeed I
was very glad to make converts; and though I never broke away
from that rule of my mind (as I may call it) of which I have
already spoken, of finding disciples rather than seeking them, yet
that I made advances to others in a special way, I have no doubt;
this came to an end, however, as soon as I fell into misgivings
as to the true ground to be taken in the controversy. For then,
when I gave up my place in the Movement, I ceased from any
such proceedings; and my utmost endeavor was to tranquillize
such persons, especially those who belonged to the new school, as
were unsettled in their religious views, and as I judged, hasty
in their conclusions. This went on till 1843; but at that date, as
soon as I turned my face Romeward, I gave up, as far as ever
was possible, the thought of, in any respect and in any shape,
acting upon others. Then I myself was simply my own concern.
How could I in any sense direct others, who had to be guided in
so momentous a matter myself? How could I be considered in
a position, even to say a word to them, one way or the other?
How could I presume to unsettle them as I was unsettled, when
I had no
means of bringing them out of such unsettlement?
And if they were unsettled already, how could I point to them
a place of refuge, when I was not sure that I should choose it
for myself? My only line, my only duty, was to keep simply to
my own case. I recollected Pascal's words, "Je mourrai seul” [I
will die alone]. I deliberately put out of my thoughts all other
works and claims, and said nothing to any one, unless I was
obliged.
But this brought upon me a great trouble. In the news-
papers there were continual reports about my intentions; I did
not answer them: presently strangers or friends wrote, begging
to be allowed to answer them; and if I still kept to my resolu-
tion and said nothing, then I was thought to be mysterious, and
a prejudice was excited against me. But what was far worse,
there were a number of tender, eager hearts, of whom I knew
nothing at all, who were watching me, wishing to think as I
thought, and to do as I did, if they could but find it out; who
in consequence were distressed that in so solemn a matter they
could not see what was coming, and who heard reports about me
this way or that, on a first day and on a second; and felt the
weariness of waiting, and the sickness of delayed hope, and did
## p. 10609 (#481) ##########################################
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10609
not understand that I was as perplexed as they were, and being
of more sensitive complexion of mind than myself, they were
made ill by the suspense. And they too, of course, for the time
thought me mysterious and inexplicable. I ask their pardon as
far as I was really unkind to them.
I left Oxford for good on Monday, February 23d, 1846. On
the Saturday and Sunday before, I was in my house at Little-
more simply by myself, as I had been for the first day or two
when I had originally taken possession of it. I slept on Sunday
night at my dear friend's, Mr. Johnson's, at the Observatory.
Various friends came to see the last of me: Mr. Copeland, Mr.
Church, Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, and Mr. Lewis. Dr. Pusey too
came up to take leave of me; and I called on Dr. Ogle, one
of my very oldest friends, for he was my private tutor when I
was an undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first college,
Trinity, which was so dear to me, and which held on its founda-
tion so many who had been kind to me both when I was a boy,
and all through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind
to me. There used to be much snapdragon growing on the
walls opposite my freshman's rooms there; and I had for years
taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence, even unto
death, in my University.
On the morning of the 23d I left the Observatory. I have
never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires as they are seen
from the railway.
FROM the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no
further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying
this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I
have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have
had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart
whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I
never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on
my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in
my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental
truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more
fervor: but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and
my happiness on that score remains to this day without inter-
ruption.
Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional arti-
cles which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them
I believed already, but not any one of them was a trial to me.
XVIII-664
## p. 10610 (#482) ##########################################
10610
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
I made a profession of them upon my reception with the greatest
ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now.
I am
far of course from denying that every article of the Christian
Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset
with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that for my-
self I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very
sensitive of the difficulties of Religion: I am as sensitive of
them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connec-
tion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and
multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand doubting
the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand diffi-
culties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject;
difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may
be many difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of diffi-
culties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations
with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work
out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not
given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or
that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of
faith, the being of God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed
with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most
power.
THE LOCUSTS
From Callista'
THEY
Τ
HEY moved right on like soldiers in their ranks, stopping at
nothing and straggling for nothing; they carried a broad
furrow or wheal all across the country, black and loath-
some, while it was as green and smiling on each side of them
and in front as it had been before they came. Before them, in
the language of the prophets, was a paradise, and behind them a
desert. They are daunted by nothing; they surmount walls and
hedges, and enter inclosed gardens or inhabited houses. A rare
and experimental vineyard has been planted in a sheltered grove.
The high winds of Africa will not commonly allow the light trel-
lis or the slim pole; but here the lofty poplar of Campania has
been possible, on which the vine plant mounts so many yards
into the air, that the poor grape-gatherers bargain for a funeral
pile and a tomb as one of the conditions of their engagement.
The locusts have done what the winds and lightning could not
## p. 10611 (#483) ##########################################
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10611
do, and the whole promise of the vintage, leaves and all, is gone,
and the slender stems are left bare. There is another yard, less
uncommon, but still tended with more than common care; each
plant is kept within due bounds by a circular trench around it,
and by upright canes on which it is to trail; in an hour the
solicitude and long toil of the vine-dresser are lost, and his pride
humbled. There is a smiling farm; another sort of vine of re-
markable character is found against the farmhouse. This vine
springs from one ro and has clothed and matted with its many
branches the four walls. The whole of it is covered thick with
long clusters, which another month will ripen. On every grape
and leaf there is a locust. Into the dry caves and pits, carefully
strewed with straw, the harvest-men have (safely, as they thought
just now) been lodging the far-famed African wheat. One grain
or root shoots up into ten, twenty, fifty, eighty, nay, three or
four hundred stalks; sometimes the stalks have two ears apiece,
and these shoot off into a number of lesser ones. These stores
are intended for the Roman populace, but the locusts have been
beforehand with them. The small patches of ground belonging
to the poor peasants up and down the country, for raising the
turnips, garlic, barley, watermelons, on which they live, are the
prey of these glutton invaders as much as the choicest vines
and olives. Nor have they any reverence for the villa of the
civic decurion or the Roman official. The neatly arranged
kitchen garden, with its cherries, plums, peaches, and apricots, is
a waste; as the slaves sit round, in the kitchen in the first court,
at their coarse evening meal, the room is filled with the invading
force, and news comes to them that the enemy has fallen upon
the apples and pears in the basement, and is at the same time
plundering and sacking the preserves of quince and pomegranate,
and reveling in the jars of precious oil of Cyprus and Mendes
in the store-rooms. They come up to the walls of Sicca, and
are flung against them into the ditch. Not a moment's hesitation
or delay: they recover their footing, they climb up the wood or
stucco, they surmount the parapet, or they have entered in at
the windows, filling the apartments and the most private and
luxurious chambers; not one or two, like stragglers at forage or
rioters after a victory, but in order of battle, and with the array
of an army. Choice plants or flowers about the impluvia and
xysti, for ornament or refreshment,- myrtles, oranges, pome-
granates, the rose and the carnation,- have disappeared. They
## p. 10612 (#484) ##########################################
10612
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
dim the bright marbles of the walls and the gilding of the ceil
ings. They enter the triclinium in the midst of the banquet;
they crawl over the viands and spoil what they do not devour.
Unrelaxed by success and by enjoyment, onward they go; a secret
mysterious instinct keeps them together, as if they had a king
over them. They move along the floor in so strange an order
that they seem to be a tessellated pavement themselves, and to
be the artificial embellishment of the place; so true are their
lines, and so perfect is the pattern they describe. Onward they
go, to the market, to the temple sacrifices, to the bakers' stores,
to the cook-shops, to the confectioners, to the druggists: nothing
comes amiss to them; wherever man has aught to eat or drink,
there are they, reckless of death, strong of appetite, certain of
conquest.
CALLISTA AND AGELLIUS
From Callista'
F°
OR an instant tears seemed about to start from Callista's eyes;
but she repressed the emotion, if it was such, and answered
with impetuosity:-"Your Master! - who is your Master?
what know I of your Master? what have you ever told me of
your Master?
I suppose it is an esoteric doctrine which I am
not worthy to know; but so it is: here you have been again and
again, and talked freely of many things, yet I am in as much
darkness about your Master as if I had never seen you. I know
he died; I know too that Christians say he lives. In some for-
tunate island, I suppose; for when I have asked, you have got
rid of the subject as best you could. You have talked about
your law and your various duties, and what you consider right,
and what is forbidden, and of some of the old writers of your
sect, and of the Jews before them; but if, as you imply, my
wants and aspirations are the same as yours, what have you
done towards satisfying them? what have you done for that
Master towards whom you now propose to lead me? No! " she
continued, starting up: "you have watched those wants and as-
pirations for yourself, not for him; you have taken interest in
them, you have cherished them, as if you were the author, you
the object of them. You profess to believe in One True God, and
to reject every other; and now you are implying that the Hand,
## p. 10613 (#485) ##########################################
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10613
the Shadow of that God, is on my mind and heart. Who is this
God? where? how? in what? O Agellius, you have stood in
the way of him, ready to speak of yourself, using him as a
means to an end. ”
"O Callista," said Agellius in an agitated voice, when he
could speak, "do my ears hear aright? do you really wish to be
taught who the true God is? "
"No; mistake me not," she cried passionately: "I have no
such wish. I could not be of your religion. Ye gods! how have
I been deceived! I thought every Christian was like Chione.
I thought there could not be a cold Christian. Chione spoke as
if a Christian's first thoughts were good-will to others; as if
his state were of such blessedness, that his dearest heart's wish
was to bring others into it. Here is a man, who, so far from
feeling himself blest, thinks I can bless him; comes to me,—me,
Callista, an herb of the field, a poor weed, exposed to every
wind of heaven, and shriveling before the fierce sun, to me he
comes to repose his heart upon. But as for any blessedness he
has to show me, why, since he does not feel any himself, no
wonder he has none to give away. I thought a Christian was
superior to time and place; but all is hollow. Alas, alas! I am
young in life to feel the force of that saying with which sages
go out of it, 'Vanity and hollowness! ' Agellius, when I first
heard you were a Christian, how my heart beat! I thought of
her who was gone; and at first I thought I saw her in you, as
if there had been some magical sympathy between you and her;
and I hoped that from you I might have learned more of that
strange strength which my nature needs, and which she told
me she possessed. Your words, your manner, your looks, were
altogether different from others who came near me. But so it
was: you came, and you went, and came again; I thought it
reserve, I thought it timidity, I thought it the caution of a per-
secuted sect: but oh my disappointment, when first I saw in you
indications that you were thinking of me only as others think,
and felt towards me as others may feel; that you were aiming
at me, not at your God; that you had much to tell of yourself,
but nothing of him! Time was I might have been led to wor-
ship you, Agellius: you have hindered it by worshiping me. »
-
## p. 10614 (#486) ##########################################
10614
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
MOTHER AND SON
From Loss and Gain'
CHA
HARLES leapt from the gig with a beating heart, and ran up
to his mother's room. She was sitting by the fire at her
work when he entered; she held out her hand coldly to
him, and he sat down. Nothing was said for a little while; then,
without leaving off her occupation, she said, “Well, Charles, and
so you are leaving us. Where and how do you propose to employ
yourself when you have entered upon your new life? "
Charles answered that he had not yet turned his mind to the
consideration of anything but the great step on which everything
else depended.
There was another silence; then she said, "You won't find
anywhere such friends as you have had at home, Charles. " Pres-
ently she continued, "You have had everything in your favor,
Charles: you have been blessed with talents, advantages of edu-
cation, easy circumstances; many a deserving young man has to
scramble on as he can. "
Charles answered that he was deeply sensible how much he
owed in temporal matters to Providence, and that it was only at
His bidding that he was giving them up.
"We all looked up to you, Charles; perhaps we made too
much of you: well, God be with you; you have taken your line. "
Poor Charles said that no one could conceive what it cost him
to give up what was so very dear to him, what was part of him-
self; there was nothing on earth which he prized like his home.
"Then why do you leave us? " she said quickly: "you must
have your way; you do it, I suppose, because you like it. "
"Oh really, my dear mother," cried he, "if you saw my heart!
You know in Scripture how people were obliged in the Apostles'
times to give up all for Christ. "
"We are heathens, then," she replied; "thank you, Charles, I
am obliged to you for this:" and she dashed away a tear from
her eye.
Charles was almost beside himself: he did not know what to
say; he stood up and leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece, sup-
porting his head on his hand.
>>
"Well, Charles," she continued, still going on with her work,
"perhaps the day will come her voice faltered; "your dear
father-> she put down her work.
――――
## p. 10615 (#487) ##########################################
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10615
"It is useless misery," said Charles: "why should I stay?
Good-by for the present, my dearest mother. I leave you in
good hands, not kinder, but better than mine; you lose me, you
gain another. Farewell for the present: we will meet when you
will, when you call; it will be a happy meeting. "
He threw himself on his knees, and laid his cheek on her
lap: she could no longer resist him; she hung over him and
began to smooth down his hair as she had done when he was
a child. At length scalding tears began to fall heavily upon his
face and neck; he bore them for a while, then started up, kissed
her cheek impetuously, and rushed out of the room. In a few
seconds he had seen and had torn himself from his sisters, and
was in his gig again by the side of his phlegmatic driver, dan-
Icing slowly up and down on his way to Collumpton.
D
THE SEPARATION OF FRIENDS
From Lyra Apostolica >
O NOT their souls who 'neath the Altar wait
Until their second birth,
The gift of patience need, as separate
From their first friends of earth?
Not that earth's blessings are not all outshone
By Eden's angel flame,
But that earth knows not yet the dead has won
That crown which was his aim.
For when he left it, 'twas a twilight scene
About his silent bier,
A breathless struggle, faith and sight between,
And Hope and sacred Fear.
Fear startled at his pains and dreary end,
Hope raised her chalice high,
And the twin sisters still his shade attend,
Viewed in the mourner's eye.
So day by day for him from earth ascends,
As dew in summer even,
The speechless intercession of his friends
Toward the azure heaven.
Ah! dearest, with a word he could dispel
All questioning, and raise.
Our hearts to rapture, whispering all was well,
And turning prayer to praise.
## p. 10616 (#488) ##########################################
10616
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
And other secrets too he could declare,
By patterns all divine,
His earthly creed retouching here and there,
And deepening every line.
Dearest! he longs to speak, as I to know,
And yet we both refrain:
It were not good; a little doubt below,
And all will soon be plain.
THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD
(AT SEA, JUNE 16TH, 1833)
L'
EAD, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on!
-
The night is dark, and I am far from home -
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene,-one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
AFTER DEATH
From The Dream of Gerontius>
I
WENT to sleep, and now I am refreshed:
A strange refreshment; for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,—
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
## p. 10617 (#489) ##########################################
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
10617
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream: yes, some one softly said,
"He's gone;" and then a sigh went round the room;
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry "Subvenite"; and they knelt in prayer —
I seem to hear him still, but thin and low
And fainter and more faint the accents come,
As at an ever-widening interval.
Ah! whence is this? What is this severance?
This silence pours a solitariness
Into the very essence of my soul;
And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Hath something too of sternness and of pain,
For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring
By a strange introversion, and perforce
I now begin to feed upon myself,
Because I have naught else to feed upon.
Am I alive or dead? I am not dead,
But in the body still; for I possess
A sort of confidence, which clings to me,
That each particular organ holds its place
As heretofore, combining with the rest
Into one symmetry, that wraps me round
And makes me man; and surely I could move,
Did I but will it, every part of me.
And yet I cannot to my sense bring home,
By very trial, that I have the power.
'Tis strange: I cannot stir a hand or foot,
I cannot make my fingers or my lips
By mutual pressure witness each to each,
Nor by the eyelid's instantaneous stroke
Assure myself I have a body still.
Nor do I know my very attitude,
Nor if I stand, or lie, or sit, or kneel.
So much I know, not knowing how I know,
That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,
Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.
Or I or it is rushing on the wings
Of light or lightning, on an onward course,
And we e'en now are million miles apart.
Yet is this peremptory severance
Wrought out in lengthening measurements of space,
Which grow and multiply by speed and time?
## p. 10618 (#490) ##########################################
10618
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
Or am I traversing infinity
By endless subdivision, hurrying back
From finite towards infinitesimal,
Thus dying out of the expanded world?
Another marvel: some one has me fast
Within his ample palm; 'tis not a grasp
Such as they use on earth, but all around
Over the surface of my subtle being,
As though I were a sphere, and capable
To be accosted thus, a uniform
And gentle pressure tells me I am not
Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.
And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth
I cannot of that music rightly say
Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones.
Oh, what a heart-subduing melody!
ANGEL
Y WORK is done,
My task is o'er,
Μ'
And so I come,
Taking it home;
For the crown is won,
Alleluia,
For evermore.
My Father gave
In charge to me
This child of earth
E'en from its birth,
To serve and save,
Alleluia,
And saved is he.
This child of clay
To me was given,
To rear and train
By sorrow and pain
In the narrow way,
Alleluia,
From earth to heaven.
## p. 10618 (#491) ##########################################
## p. 10618 (#492) ##########################################
BUS
SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
B Crasch
## p. 10618 (#493) ##########################################
LAL ST
(
STON
## p. 10618 (#494) ##########################################
NEWTON
## p. 10619 (#495) ##########################################
10619
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
(1642-1727)
T HAS been said that the history of Sir Isaac Newton is also
the history of science; yet the character of his life and work
does not entirely exclude him from the category of men of
letters. While his great book the 'Principia' is written in Latin and
treats of mathematics, its tremendous scope and magnificent revela-
tions entitle it to be placed without incongruity among those works
which, like 'Paradise Lost' or the 'Divine Comedy,' have widened
men's outlook into the universe. Milton and Dante dealt with the
spiritual order of creation, Sir Isaac Newton with the material; yet
to those who perceive an almost mystical significance in numbers,—
to whom mathematics are, in a sense, gateways to the unseen,- the
author of the 'Principia' and of the Treatise on Optics' will seem
scarcely less a teacher than the poets.
The life of Sir Isaac Newton, in its harmony, in the smoothness
of its course, in the perfection of its development, seems singularly
expressive of the science to which it was dedicated. From the time
when as a village boy he made water-wheels and kite-lanterns for
his companions, to the hour when full of years and honors he passed
away, the life of Newton was a series of orderly progresses towards a
fixed goal.
He was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, on December 25th, 1642.
His father, who had died before his birth, had been lord and farmer
of the little manor of Woolsthorpe. Newton's mother designed that
he should perform the same office, removing him from Grantham
School for this purpose when he was about fifteen years old. New-
ton soon showed that the yeoman's life was not congenial to him.
He would read a book under a hedge, or construct a water-wheel
for the meadow brook, while the sheep strayed and the cattle were
treading down the corn. He was therefore sent back to the school,
where he had already earned a reputation for industry. If the legend
be true, his first stimulus to study was a well-directed kick in the
stomach delivered by the boy next above him in class. It was char-
acteristic of his gentle nature that the only path of revenge open
to him was through his superior intellect. From Grantham School,
Newton went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in the year 1660. His
mathematical genius soon manifested itself. About the year 1663 he
## p. 10620 (#496) ##########################################
10620
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
invented the formula known as the Binomial Theorem, by which he
afterwards established his method of fluxions. He had been admitted
to Cambridge as a subsizar. He became a scholar in 1664, and in
1665 he took his degree as Bachelor of Arts. In 1667 he was made
Junior Fellow, and in 1668 he took his Master of Arts degree, and
was appointed to a Senior Fellowship. In 1669 he became Lucasian
professor of mathematics. In the eight years between Newton's ad-
mission to the University and his promotion to this chair, the germs
of his great discoveries had come into existence. During his long
after life they were but brought to a perfect development. The
keystone of the 'Principia,' the principle of Universal Gravitation,-
that every particle of matter is attracted by or gravitates to every
other particle of matter with a force inversely proportional to the
squares of their distances, this principle had suggested itself to New-
ton as early as 1666; but the great work in which it was embodied
was not presented to the Royal Society until 1687. The Treatise
on Optics' was based on Newton's Cambridge experiments with the
prism and with the telescope, which had led to his being made a
member of the Royal Society in 1672. He was obliged to contend
with the most noted scientists of his time for the principle of this
book, that light is not homogeneous but consists of rays, some of
which are more refrangible than others. His triumph was as much
a matter of course as the workings of natural law. His contempo-
raries accepted his conclusions when they realized that he was more
deeply in the secret of the universe than any man had ever been.
The honors accorded to him were numerous. In 1688 he was
elected by his university to the Convention Parliament. In 1696 he
was made Warden, and in 1699 Master of the Mint. In 1701 he was
again returned to Parliament. He was made president of the Royal
Society in 1703. In 1705 he was knighted by Queen Anne. Upon
his death in 1727, he was buried in Westminster Abbey in the state
befitting his princely endowments.
The words of Newton shortly before his death, that he seemed to
himself "like a boy playing on the sea-shore, diverting himself in
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordi-
nary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him,"
are significant of his habitual humility and reverence. His soul was
childlike in the presence of mysteries to which he held one key.
His bequests to posterity are not only his stupendous discoveries, but
the example of the scientific temper of mind which is positive rather
than negative, and which seeks a spiritual order behind the veil of
matter.
## p. 10621 (#497) ##########################################
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
10621
LETTER TO FRANCIS ASTOR IN 1669
INCE in your letter you give me so much liberty of spending
S my judgment about what may be to your advantage in
traveling, I shall do it more freely than perhaps otherwise.
would have been decent. First, then, I will lay down some gen-
eral rules, most of which, I believe, you have considered already:
but if any of them be new to you, they may excuse the rest; if
none at all, yet is my punishment more in writing than yours in
reading.
When you come into any fresh company:-
:-1. Observe their
humors. 2. Suit your own carriage thereto, by which insinuation
you will make their converse more free and open. 3. Let your
discourse be more in queries and doubtings than peremptory as-
sertions or disputings; it being the design of travelers to learn,
not to teach. Besides it will persuade your acquaintance that
you have the greater esteem of them, and so make them more
ready to communicate what they know to you; whereas nothing
sooner occasions disrespect and quarrels than peremptoriness.
You will find little or no advantage in seeming wiser or much
more ignorant than your company. 4. Seldom discommend any-
thing though never so bad, or do it but moderately, lest you be
unexpectedly forced to an unhandsome retraction. It is safer to
commend anything more than it deserves, than to discommend a
thing so much as it deserves; for commendations meet not so
often with oppositions, or at least are not usually so ill resented
by men that think otherwise, as discommendations: and you will
insinuate into men's favor by nothing sooner than seeming to
approve and commend what they like; but beware of doing it by
comparison. 5. If you be affronted, it is better, in a foreign
country, to pass it by in silence and with a jest, though with
some dishonor, than to endeavor revenge: for in the first case,
your credit's ne'er the worse when you return into England, or
come into other company that have not heard of the quarrel;
but in the second case, you may bear the marks of the quarrel
while you live, if you outlive it at all. But if you find yourself
unavoidably engaged, 'tis best I think, if you can command your
passion and language, to keep them pretty evenly at some cer-
tain moderate pitch; not much heightening them to exasperate
your adversary, or provoke his friends, nor letting them grow
overmuch dejected to make him insult. In a word, if you can
## p. 10622 (#498) ##########################################
10622
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
keep reason above passion, that and watchfulness will be your
best defendants. To which purpose you may consider, that
though such excuses as this-He provoked me so much I could
not forbear-may pass among friends, yet amongst strangers
they are insignificant, and only argue a traveler's weakness.
To these I may add some general heads for inquiries or
observations, such as at present I can think on. As,-1. To
observe the policies, wealth, and State affairs of nations, so far
as a solitary traveler may conveniently do. 2. Their impositions
upon all sorts of people, trades, or commodities, that are remark-
able. 3. Their laws and customs, how far they differ from ours
4. Their trades and arts, wherein they excel or come short of us
in England. 5. Such fortifications as you shall meet with, their
fashion, strength, and advantages for defense, and other such
military affairs as are considerable. 6. The power and respect
belonging to their degrees of nobility or magistracy.
7. It
will not be time misspent to make a catalogue of the names
and excellencies of those men that are most wise, learned, or
esteemed in any nation. 8. Observe the mechanism and manner
of guiding ships. 9. Observe the products of nature in several
places, especially in mines, with the circumstances of mining and
of extracting metals or minerals out of their ore, and of refining,
them; and if you meet with any transmutations out of their own
species into another (as out of iron into copper, out of any
metal into quicksilver, out of one salt into another, or into an
insipid body, etc. ), those above all will be worth your noting,
being the most luciferous, and many times lucriferous experi-
ments too, in philosophy. 10. The prices of diet and other
things. 11. And the staple commodities of places.
These generals (such as at present I could think of), if they
will serve for nothing else, yet they may assist you in drawing
up a model to regulate your travels by. As for particulars, these
that follow are all that I can now think of; —viz. , I. Whether
at Schemnitium in Hungary (where there are mines of gold,
copper, iron, vitriol, antimony, etc. ) they change iron into copper
by dissolving it in a vitriolate water, which they find in cavities.
of rocks in the mines, and then melting the slimy solution in a
strong fire, which in the cooling proves copper. The like is said
to be done in other places which I cannot now remember; per-
haps too it may be done in Italy. For about twenty or thirty
years agone there was a certain vitriol came from thence (called
## p. 10623 (#499) ##########################################
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
10623
Roman vitriol), but of a nobler virtue than that which is now
called by that name; which vitriol is not now to be gotten,
because perhaps they make a greater gain by some such trick
as turning iron into copper with it than by selling it. 2. Whether
in Hungary, Sclavonia, Bohemia, near the town Eila, or at the
mountains of Bohemia near Silesia, there be rivers whose waters
are impregnated with gold; perhaps, the gold being dissolved by
some corrosive water like aqua regis, and the solution carried
along with the stream that runs through the mines. And whether
the practice of laying mercury in the rivers, till it be tinged
with gold, and then straining the mercury through leather, that
the gold may stay behind, be a secret yet, or openly practiced.
3. There is newly contrived, in Holland, a mill to grind glasses
plane withal, and I think polishing them too; perhaps it will be
worth the while to see it. 4. There is in Holland one Borry,
who some years since was imprisoned by the Pope, to have
extorted from him secrets (as I am told) of great worth, both
as to medicine and profit; but he escaped into Holland, where
they have granted him a guard. I think he usually goes clothed
in green.
Pray inquire what you can of him, and whether his
ingenuity be any profit to the Dutch. You may inform yourself
whether the Dutch have any tricks to keep their ships from be-
ing all worm-eaten in their voyages to the Indies; whether pen-
dulum clocks do any service in finding out the longitude, etc.
I am very weary, and shall not stay to part with a long com-
pliment; only I wish you a good journey, and God be with you.
FROM MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES'
Book iii. of the 'Principia'
TH
HIS most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could
only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelli-
gent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the
centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like
wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One;
especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature
with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes
into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars
should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath
placed those systems at immense distances one from another.
## p. 10624 (#500) ##########################################
10624
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world,
but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont
to be called Lord God, autozpáτwp, or Universal Ruler: for God
is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is
the dominion of God not over his own body, as those imagine
who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants.
The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect:
but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said
to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God, the God of
Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords: but we do not say,
my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of
Gods; we do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: these are titles
which have no respect to servants. The word God usually signi-
fies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of
a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or
imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God.
And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a
living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and from his other per-
fections, that he is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and
infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches
from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity;
he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be
done. He is not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite;
he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present.
He endures for ever, and is everywhere present; and by exist-
ing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space.
Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible
moment of duration is everywhere, certainly the Maker and Lord
of all things cannot be never and nowhere. Every soul that has
perception is, though in different times and in different organs
of sense and motion, still the same indivisible person. There
are given successive parts in duration, coexistent parts in space,
but neither the one nor the other in the person of a man, or
his thinking principle; and much less can they be found in the
thinking substance of God. Every man, so far as he is a thing
that has perception, is one and the same man during his whole
life, in all and each of his organs of sense. God is the same
God, always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not virtually
only, but also substantially; for virtue cannot subsist without sub-
stance. In him are all things contained and moved; yet neither
affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies;
•
## p. 10625 (#501) ##########################################
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
10625
bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. It is
allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by
the same necessity he exists always and everywhere. Whence
also he is all similar,-all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all
power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a manner not
at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner
utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colors, so
have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God per-
ceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body
and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard,
nor touched; nor ought he to be worshiped under the representa-
tion of any corporeal thing. We have ideas of his attributes, but
what the real substance of anything is we know not. In bodies,
we see only their figures and colors, we hear only the sounds,
we touch only their outward surfaces, we smell only the smells,
and taste the savors; but their inward substances are not to be
known either by our senses, or by any reflex act of our minds:
much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of God.
We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances
of things, and final causes: we admire him for his perfections;
but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion:
for we adore him as his servants; and a God without dominion,
providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature.
Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always
and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that
diversity of natural things which we find suited to different.
times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will
of a Being necessarily existing. But by way of allegory, God is
said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to desire, to give,
to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to frame, to work,
to build; for all our notions of God are taken from the ways of
mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has
some likeness however. And thus much concerning God: to dis-
course of whom from the appearances of things does certainly
belong to Natural Philosophy.
Hitherto we have explained the phenomena of the heavens
and of our sea by the power of gravity, but have not yet assigned
the cause of this power. This is certain, that it must proceed
from a cause that penetrates to the very centres of the sun
and planets, without suffering the least diminution of its force;
that operates not according to the quantity of the surfaces of the
XVIII-665
## p. 10626 (#502) ##########################################
10626
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
particles upon which it acts (as mechanical causes use to do),
but according to the quantity of the solid matter which they cou-
tain, and propagates its virtue on all sides to immense distances,
decreasing always in the duplicate proportion of the distances.
Gravitation towards the sun is made up out of the gravitations
towards the several particles of which the body of the sun is
composed: and in receding from the sun decreases accurately in
the duplicate proportion of the distances as far as the orb of
Saturn, as evidently appears from the quiescence of the aphelions
of the planets; nay, and even to the remotest aphelions of the
comets, if those aphelions are also quiescent. But hitherto I
have not been able to discover the cause of those properties
of gravity from phænomena, and I frame no hypotheses: for
whatever is not deduced from the phænomena is to be called
an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical,
whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in
experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular proposi-
tions are inferred from the phænomena, and afterwards rendered
general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the
mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of mo-
tion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough
that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws
which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for
all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea.
And now we might add something concerning a certain most
subtle Spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies: by
the force and action of which Spirit the particles of bodies mutu-
ally attract one another at near distances, and cohere, if contig-
uous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances, as well
repelling as attracting the neighboring corpuscles; and light is
emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all
sensation is excited, and the members of animal bodies move at
the command of the will,-namely, by the vibrations of this
Spirit, mutually propagated along the solid filaments of the nerves,
from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the
brain into the muscles. But these are things that cannot be
explained in few words, nor are we furnished with that suffi-
ciency of experiments which is required to an accurate determi-
nation and demonstration of the laws by which this electric and
elastic Spirit operates.
## p. 10627 (#503) ##########################################
10627
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
(TWELFTH CENTURY)
BY CHARLES HARVEY GENUNG
HE ancient epic poetry of the German race was the outcome
of the vast migration of the peoples that wrecked the Ro-
man Empire and laid the foundations of modern European
civilization. That tremendous cataclysm out of which a new world
slowly rose was accompanied by impressive events, profound emo-
tions, and deeds of lofty heroism, which deeply stirred the imagina-
tion of a poetic people. It is by an inborn impulse that man seeks to
give to his emotions, and to the events that call them forth, poetic
expression and permanence. And thus the excited fancy began at
once to play about the prominent figures and striking moments of
that magnificent drama, and a rich hoard of legendary lore was
stored up for future generations. With the material actually fur-
nished by history, the gods and myths of a remoter age were naïvely
blended. As the traditions grew old and were seen through the haze
of years, successive generations shaped anew their ancestral heritage.
All that is best in the epic traditions of the migration, winnowed by
the centuries and refined by the ideals of a more polished age, is to
be found in the Nibelungenlied. It is the voice of a vigorous and
high-hearted people, speaking in the proud consciousness of its own
substantial worth. Here beside the cruelties of a rude and martial
time are also the rugged virtues which Tacitus praised. Faithfulness,
loyalty, integrity, are the ornaments of the primitive Teutonic char-
acter. Its adaptability and receptivity are also manifest. In contact
with the higher civilization of Rome and the teachings of Christianity,
the Germans assimilated the benefits of both with their own national
traits. The Nibelungenlied marks the culmination of the great pro-
cess which had made Rome a German empire, and had transformed
the invading hordes into a highly civilized people. Not only by rea-
son of its splendid poetic and dramatic power, but also as a monu-
ment in the history of the human race, the Nibelungenlied takes
rank among the great national epics of the world's literature.
If a comparison between the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied as
poems would be a futile piece of literary conjuring,- Goethe called
it a "pernicious endeavor, "-in a large historical sense they present
## p. 10628 (#504) ##########################################
10628
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
some interesting points of resemblance. The invulnerability of Sieg-
fried except where the linden leaf had fallen upon his shoulder, and
the invulnerability of Achilles except in the heel, have a curious
similarity, from which, however, no sure inference can be drawn.
The real points of resemblance lie only in the sources and circum-
stances out of which the poems arose. The creative power of Homer
is incomparably superior to that of the Nibelungen poet; but the
obscure events in the dim dawn of history, of which the legendary
materials used by the poets were the imaginative product, were in
both cases connected with a great migration, in which a young and
powerful people overcame an older and finer one, to receive in turn
the benefits of contact with the civilization it had overthrown. Both
poets had inherited a vast treasury of legends whose historical origin
was already faded, and with these they blended the myths of an age
still more remote; but the manners and customs and geography are
those of their own time, without pretense of antiquarian accuracy.
In the Nibelungenlied the conflict between two civilizations is not the
theme; there are no fine contrasts such as Homer has drawn between
the rude camp life of the Greek warriors and the polished social
organization of the citizens of Troy: but the whole poem is in itself
a witness of the ancient contact and now almost complete amalgama-
tion between the virtues, customs, and beliefs of an old heathen race,
and the softer manners of a cultured, Christianized people. Each
poem stands at the beginning of its literature, and each bears evi-
dence that it is the culmination of a long series of efforts in which
the poetic genius of the people had been working upon its legendary
material, until in the hands of a great artist this material finally took
its monumental and lasting form. Each poem, moreover, marks the
highest point reached by the folk-poetry of the respective races;
with these works art had entered into literature, and thenceforth the
simple songs that flowed from the lips of untaught singers lost their
former dignity. After Homer, though at a long interval, came the
classic age of Greek letters; after the Nibelungenlied, the Minne-
singers and the glories of the Hohenstaufen time. It is furthermore
interesting to observe how in more recent literary history the two
currents of influence represented by the Iliad and by the Nibe-
lungenlied have been brought into contrast. The classicism of French
literature in the age of Louis XIV. was a harking back to the form
and style of the ancient Greeks, and these French models dominated
German literature in the eighteenth century. The revolt of Roman-
ticism against this domination was a harking back to the mediæval
and purely Germanic form and style exemplified in the Nibelungen-
lied. Thirteen centuries after Attila had carried terror to the gates
of Rome, the poetry which had its rise in those great invasions was
## p. 10629 (#505) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10629
made the basis of a patriotic national revival, and upon it the
Romanticists proceeded to create the literature of a new time. Thus
it became the mission of the Nibelungenlied, after lying for more
than two centuries utterly forgotten, to strengthen anew the hearts
of a late generation, which lay prostrate before Napoleon, and to
remind the German people of their ancient greatness. It acted as a
national liberator. Not only was this epic monument their own, but
the heroes whom it celebrates were their ancestors, and in their veins
still flowed the blood of the warriors who had vanquished the legions
of Rome.
For two centuries and a half the Nibelungenlied lay totally neg-
lected and forgotten. This fact is a witness to the demoralizing
nature of the struggles through which Germany was forced to pass
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1500 she stood in
the vanguard of the nations; in 1650 she was but the shadow of a once
mighty people, now completely exhausted physically and intellectu-
ally. Incessant wars, with famine in their wake, had in thirty years
reduced a population of sixteen millions to four, and had cowed and
brutalized the survivors. All continuity with the fine traditions of the
past was broken. In the olden time the legends of the Nibelungen
were widely known. Echoes of them are heard even in the Anglo-
Saxon 'Beowulf. ' In the centuries after the Lied had taken the form
in which we know it, its popularity was universal. But the rise of
the highly elaborated court poetry had already begun to undermine the
taste for the elder epic. The gradual petrifaction of the Minnesang
into the Meistersang contributed to the same end, and the revival of
learning in the brilliant Humanistic movement hastened the process.
The intellectual upheaval known as the Reformation, although out of
line with the Humanistic Renascence, also helped to subvert the old
Germanic traditions, in which so many healthy heathen elements held
a still persistent place. The last person who seems to have taken
any interest in the Nibelungenlied was the Emperor Maximilian, who
had a manuscript of it made. In the sixteenth century there is no
mention of the poem, except by a few obscure historians who used
it superficially and unintelligently as a historical document. Lazius,
the Austrian scholar, quotes several strophes in his 'History of the
Migrations. In the seventeenth century, amid the devastations of the
Thirty Years' War, it had passed so entirely from human ken that
Opitz, the literary dictator of his threadbare time, had no other
knowledge of it than what he had derived from Lazius; and as late
as 1752 Gottsched, the literary leader of an equally threadbare period,
seems not to have known that such a poem had ever existed. Just
four years later the Nibelungenlied was "discovered. " Inspired by
Bodmer's Old German studies, a Swiss physician found at the castle
## p. 10630 (#506) ##########################################
10630
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
of Hohenems a manuscript of the poem which is now regarded as
the oldest form in which the work has come down to us.
It con-
tains the famous 'Klage' or lamentation for the fallen heroes; and
in 1757 Bodmer published the second part under the title of 'Kriem-
hild's Revenge. ' But the work aroused no interest even among those
most interested in the folk-lore and poetry of their native land.
Neither Herder nor Lessing nor Klopstock recognized the national
epic; Wieland too remained untouched, although when the work
came out he was in daily intercourse with Bodmer. Indeed, Bodmer
himself was not aware that he was dealing with a great poem, but
regarded it rather as an antiquarian curiosity. The first complete
edition of the Nibelungenlied appeared in 1782. Professor Myller of
Berlin included it in his collection of 'Poems of the Twelfth, Thir-
teenth, and Fourteenth Centuries. ' The fact that such a collection
had found subscribers at all is evidence that some languid interest
in these early ages had begun to manifest itself; but it was still
an interest of curiosity rather than one of appreciation. A letter
addressed to Myller by Frederick the Great will best illustrate the
attitude of many cultivated readers of that time. Myller had sent a
copy of his work to the King, who, writing from Potsdam in 1784,
said:"Most learned and faithful subject, dear sir: You think a
great deal too much of those poems of the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries which you have had printed, and which you
consider of so much value for the enrichment of the German lan-
guage. In my opinion they are not worth a gunshot, and did not
deserve to be dragged out of the dust of oblivion.
