Principia in 1713, (the year before the sacrifice to Heavenly Truth), the impossibility of noticing Flamsteed in any manner which would not disgust and irritate him, must have been very clear. Newton appears therefore only to have acted with common prudence and forbearance in avoiding such notice as much as possible. Flamsteed is not quoted as authority for the Lunar Theory, of which he rejected a great part. (See Account of Flamsteed, pp. 304, 305, 309.) His observations of the comet are quoted as the best. In several other points, as the observations of the satellites of Jupiter, Newton refers to published observations of other astronomers, instead of the private communications of Flamsteed. It was proper to reason upon published rather than upon unpublished observations; and the terms on which Flamsteed had put himself with Newton were probably felt by the great philosopher to be such as rendered it undesirable to make use of the private letters of his perverse correspondent.

So far as the published letters of Flamsteed prove anything, they show, that not only he did not feel himself injured by not being mentioned in those parts of the second edition of the Principia which refer to the moon, but that he entertained such an opinion of the work as would have made him angry at being so introduced. Thus, soon after the publication, he says, (p. 305,) "I think his new Principia worse than the old." And (p. 309) he writes to his friend Abraham Sharp, "I have determined to lay these crotchets of Sir Isaac Newton wholly aside; and I think if you purchase not the new edition of his book [of which the price was 18s.] you will be at least 17s. a saver by it; for I know not whether all the alterations and additions be worth 12d."

So much for the wrong done to Flamsteed by not being sufficiently mentioned in the second edition of the Principia. I have been told also that I ought to have noticed more particularly some of the extravagant expressions of assumed authority and intemperate accusation which occur in the note in the Quarterly Review: but as these can affect only the character of the anonymous reviewer, I do not see how it can be worth while to make them the subject of remark.

I will again leave it to the reader to decide, after looking at the passages I have just produced, whether the writer of the note, in appealing to "the whole tenour of the book," as proving that Flamsteed comprehended and accepted Newton's Theory, was not asserting at random, and taking the chance of the impression he might produce, without having read the work which was under his review, or understanding the question on which he undertook to pronounce.

I suppose that if the vilifier of Newton has nothing to support him but rhetoric of this kind, the admirers of that great man will not feel any permanent inquietude; and my sole object will be answered.

I am, Sir, your very obedient servant, Trinity College, Feb. 6, 1836.

W. WHEWELL.

XLII. Observations on a Note respecting Mr. Whewell, which is appended to No. CX. of the Quarterly Review. By S. P. RIGAUD, Esq. M.A. F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Astronomy, Oxford.

To the Editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal. SIRS, Oxford.

THE following remarks were, for the most part, drawn up before I saw the letters which Mr. Whewell has printed in the Cambridge Chronicle of the 6th and 13th of February*. Some parts of what had been written were found, in consequence, to be unnecessary; but leaving these to his able defence, I am still induced to offer the remainder to your consideration. Irritation is so great an obstacle to the attainment of truth, that I deeply regret the tone which the writer has assumed. That, however, I leave to his better feelings; my business is with his facts and his arguments.

S. P. RIGAUD.

THE reader is most probably acquainted with the Note in question; it seems unnecessary, therefore, to occupy his time with introductory explanations of the parts which have been thought to require correction. The topics, though examined separately, are taken nearly in the order which the original suggested.

Whiston was an honest and laborious man, but very deficient in judgement. As he advanced in life he became more pertinacious in error; he had sacrificed the world to his sincerity, and, conscious of moral rectitude in his purpose, he persuaded himself that he must be equally right in his opinions. Bishop Hare's own character adds no weight to the sentiments which he may express on this subject, but the few words which have been quoted from him are not contradictory to what is here said. Sir Isaac Newton, therefore, may be equally justified in his early patronage of his successor in the Lucasian Professorship, and in afterwards shunning his society. This change Whiston was unwilling to consider as just; and in

See the preceding article of our present Number.

speaking of the man whose friendship he had lost, he says indeed what he thinks, but his thoughts, which at best were often inaccurate, were now warped by his feelings of disappointment.

I have not the slightest wish to take in any way from what may be justly due to Flamsteed; on the contrary, I honour his self-devotion to that department of science in which he was qualified so eminently and so usefully to excel; I honour his independence and noble application of his own property to his great (and it ought to have been national) object; I respect his religion, but I fear that I do not adopt so high a view of it as some of his undiscriminating admirers. I do not mean to express any doubts of his opinions on the great truths of Revelation, or of his general intention to conform his conduct to the dictates of Christianity; but his unhappy temper, irritated by disease, was suffered to become ungovernable. "If any man seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart," the apostle has told us the state to which he may be reduced. I presume to judge no one or to pronounce that "his religion is vain"; but, with every allowance for the weakness of human nature, I must say, that professions of forgiveness too frequently repeated, and constant assumption of the special favour of Heaven, are, when unaccompanied by kind thoughts and mild language, the sources of very painful impressions.

To enter fully into the character of Halley would require more time and space than can now be assigned to it; but there is one point which must not be passed over. To call him a "self-convicted infidel" is, to say the least, strong language, which when applied to the mighty dead, should not have been used without mature consideration. The authority, from which it is derived, was probably Whiston's account of the election in 1691 to the Savilian Professorship. The application, that Whiston makes of it to his own case, might have suggested the possibility of some bias in the direction which he gives to the story; and as the question is now about Halley's own view of his opinions, we have much better evidence in a letter which he wrote on the 22nd of June, in the same year, to Mr. Abraham Hill, which proves that, so far from submitting of necessity to an examination, in which he was likely to bear himself, as Whiston reports, with unbending defiance towards Bentley, he courted the inquiry in confidence of being able to clear himself from the charge which was brought against him. The letter likewise supplies us with the definite nature of this charge; for it mentions a caveat having been entered against him till he could show that he was "not guilty of asserting the eternity of the

world." This objection necessarily involved his being an atheist, and not merely a sceptic as Whiston says, which shows again the inaccuracy of his relation. It may be from the fault of a bad memory, it may be from a limited extent of reading, but I can at this moment recall to my recollection no one passage, in which Halley has published anything profane; and I may add that in some disquisitions on the general deluge, which he published in the Philosophical Transactions, he treats the Scripture account with all due respect. These disquisitions seem also to supply a clue to the cause of the caveat; for having reasoned on the dislocations visible on the earth's surface, he subjoined an explanation of his hypothesis, because it was suggested to him that those changes might rather have happened in times before the Mosaic creation, (when a former world was possibly reduced to chaos, out of whose ruins the present might be formed,) than at the period of the Deluge. This, in the eyes of many religious persons, may then have amounted to a heinous offence; but whether it did so with justice may now be safely left to the determination of Christian geologists. The passage immediately referred to occurs indeed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1724; but Halley had treated of the Deluge in the 190th number of the same collection, which, having been published in 1687, makes it not improbable that he may then, in discussing the subject among his friends, have used the same topics, and have thus raised the storm which burst on him in 1691. But to return to the term originally objected to: it was proposed, in 1691, to send in testimonials of Halley's character to the electors of the Savilian Professor; and the form, in one part, said that his friends recommended him from their "own long experience of his mathematical genius, probity, sobriety, and good life."

This, perhaps, should not be assumed as a necessary consequence, lest injustice should be done to those philosophers, both heathen and Christian, who, salvá pietate, have entertained the notion of the eternity of the world as the coexistent effect of an Eternal Intelligent Cause; the Stoics, for instance, Volkelius, &c.

Writers on Natural Theology now considered as of the highest authority, following the example set by Crellius, are, we believe, disposed to place most reliance upon the arguments to be derived from the course of nature daily presented to the view, as being of the greatest efficacy, both with ordinary minds and with those to whom abstruse questions respecting the materia prima, &c. may have suggested themselves.

"Nunc id," says Crellius, "quod tota Peripateticorum, imo et Platonicorum schola, non modò fatetur, sed et urget, probabimus, nempe res hujus universi omnes finis gratiâ existere; sed ita, ut controversiam de materiâ prima, quæcunque tandem ea sit, non faciamus nostram."-Crellius, De Deo et ejus Attributis, cap. iii., in which work he was assisted by Stanislaus Lubjeniecius, a Polish nobleman, the author of the Theatrum Cometicum.-R. T.]

This passage is copied from a paper in Halley's own handwriting, and shows that "self-convicted" is the last term which can with propriety be applied to him. I hope that I feel as much as any man a deep abhorrence of irreligion, and I would not say a word to palliate its baneful nature; but to overload accusations of this kind with unsupported prejudice seems to me to be the surest way of destroying their effect.

That anything should have induced Newton to use harsh language to Flamsteed is sincerely to be deplored; but there are circumstances not to be neglected which may be gathered from Flamsteed's own account of what passed on the 26th of October 1711. His ironical thanks and recommendation to restraint of passion, were no soothers of irritation. While the accusation of robbery was dwelt on, it must be remembered that Newton was under the persuasion of Flamsteed having "called him an atheist"; that Flamsteed, when this was mentioned, left him, without the slightest notice, in error on so grave a point; and though he denies that he had uttered it, he does not deny that he had entertained the suspicion; for he only adds, "I hope he is none." If Newton, under such provocation, had remained unmoved, he would have been not merely (as he was) one of the first of men, but he must have been more than man; if the mildness of his natural temper had not wholly unfitted him for personal altercation, he never could have used such an unappropriate appellation as puppy -how he would have expressed himself if more familiar with the language of reproach, I am unwilling to inquire.

When Newton called for the catalogue of stars, "It would neither be prudent nor safe," Flamsteed said, "to trust a copy of them out of my own keeping. He [Newton] answered, "that I might put them into his hands sealed up; whereby I understood they were to be so kept by him till I had finished the whole, and was ready to print it." Here then was no "solemn pledge"; not even any express conditions or precise explanation are said to have accompanied the delivery. Now Newton's undoubted object was to secure the publication of the catalogue, and as Flamsteed had taken his own view for himself, Newton may, on his side, have understood that the precaution of the seal was only to make the papers "safe" until the time came for printing them. There are difficulties about the story of this seal being broken, for it is told (I do not mean intentionally) without sufficient precision. Every honest mind revolts against a breach of trust; but we ought to be well convinced of the character of the act and of the criminality of the person against whom it is alleged, before we pour