Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/501

Wc cannot enter upon any detail or present even a summary of the magnificent result of these labors. They are to be found in his immortal work, the 'Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica' given to the world in 1687 under the auspices of the Koyal Society. Of this work, the great Laplace, who, of those who have applied the highest powers of the human mind to the investigation of the phenomena of gravitation, stands second only because Newton lived before him, says: "The universality and generality of the discoveries it contains, the number of profound and original views respecting the system of the universe it presents, and all presented with so much elegance, will insure to it a lasting preeminence over all other productions of the human mind." "It is a work," says Sir David Brewster, "which will be memorable, not in the annals of one science or one country only, but which will form an epoch in the history of the world, and will ever be regarded as the brightest page in the records of human reason. It is a work which would be read with delight in every planet of our system, and in every system in the universe. There was but one earth on whose form and movements and tides the philosopher could exercise his genius; one moon whose perturbations and inequalities and action he could study; one sun whose controlling force and apparent motions he could calculate and determine; one system of comets whose eccentric paths he could explore and rectify; one universe of stars to whose binary and multiple combinations he could extend the law of gravity. To have been the chosen sage, summoned to the study of that earth, these systems and that universe, the favored lawgiver to worlds unnumbered, the high-priest in the temple of boundless space, was a privilege that could be granted to but one member of the human family; and to have executed the task, was an achievement which, in its magnitude, can be measured only by the infinite in space, and in the duration of its triumphs by the infinite in time."