The theology and philosophy in Cicero's _Somnium Scipionis_ explained.
Or, a brief attempt to demonstrate, that the Newtonian system is
perfectly agreeable to the notions of the wisest ancients: and that
mathematical principles are the only sure ones. [By Bishop Horne,[334]
at the age of nineteen.] London, 1751, 8vo.
This tract, which was not printed in the collected works, and is now
excessively rare, is mentioned in _Notes and Queries_, 1st S., v, 490, 573;
2d S., ix, 15. The boyish satire on Newton is amusing. Speaking of old
Benjamin Martin,[335] he goes on as follows:
{153}
"But the most elegant account of the matter [attraction] is by that
hominiform animal, Mr. Benjamin Martin, who having attended Dr.
Desaguliers'[336] fine, raree, gallanty shew for some years [Desaguliers
was one of the first who gave public experimental lectures, before the
saucy boy was born] in the capacity of a turnspit, has, it seems, taken it
into his head to set up for a philosopher."
Thus is preserved the fact, unknown to his biographers, that Benj. Martin
was an assistant to Desaguliers in his lectures. Hutton[337] says of him,
that "he was well skilled in the whole circle of the mathematical and
philosophical sciences, and wrote useful books on every one of them": this
is quite true; and even at this day he is read by twenty where Horne is
read by one; see the stalls, _passim_. All that I say of him, indeed my
knowledge of the tract, is due to this contemptuous mention of a more
durable man than himself. My assistant secretary at the Astronomical
Society, the late Mr. Epps,[338] bought the copy at a stall because his eye
was caught by the notice of "Old Ben Martin," of whom he was a great
reader. Old Ben could not be a Fellow of the Royal Society, because he kept
a shop: even though the shop sold nothing but philosophical instruments.
Thomas Wright, similarly situated as to shop and goods, never was a Fellow.
The Society of our day has greatly degenerated: those of the old time would
be pleased, no doubt, that the glories of their day {154} should be
commemorated. In the early days of the Society, there was a similar
difficulty about Graunt, the author of the celebrated work on mortality.
But their royal patron, "who never said a foolish thing," sent them a sharp
message, and charged them if they found any more such tradesmen, they
should "elect them without more ado."
Horne's first pamphlet was published when he was but twenty-one years old.
Two years afterwards, being then a Fellow of his college, and having seen
more of the world, he seems to have felt that his manner was a little too
pert. He endeavored, it is said, to suppress his first tract: and copies
are certainly of extreme rarity. He published the following as his maturer
view:
A fair, candid, and impartial state of the case between Sir Isaac
Newton and Mr. Hutchinson.[339] In which is shown how far a system of
physics is capable of mathematical demonstration; how far Sir Isaac's,
as such a system, has that demonstration; and consequently, what regard
Mr. Hutchinson's claim may deserve to have paid to it. By George Horne,
M.A. Oxford, 1753, 8vo.
It must be remembered that the successors of Newton were very apt to
declare that Newton had demonstrated attraction as a _physical_ cause: he
had taken reasonable pains to show that he did not pretend to this. If any
one had said to Newton, I hold that every particle of matter is a
responsible being of vast intellect, ordered by the Creator to move as it
would do if every other particle attracted it, and gifted with power to
make its way in true accordance with that law, as easily as a lady picks
her way across the street; what have you to say against it?--Newton must
have replied, Sir! if you really undertake to maintain this as
_demonstrable_, your soul had better borrow a little power {155} from the
particles of which your body is made: if you merely ask me to refute it, I
tell you that I neither can nor need do it; for whether attraction comes in
this way or in any other, _it comes_, and that is all I have to do with it.
The reader should remember that the word attraction, as used by Newton and
the best of his followers, only meant a _drawing towards_, without any
implication as to the cause. Thus whether they said that matter attracts
matter, or that young lady attracts young gentleman, they were using one
word in one sense. Newton found that the law of the first is the inverse
square of the distance: I am not aware that the law of the second has been
discovered; if there be any chance, we shall see it at the year 1856 in
this list.
In this point young Horne made a hit. He justly censures those who fixed
upon Newton a more positive knowledge of what attraction is than he
pretended to have. "He has owned over and over he did not know what he
meant by it--it might be this, or it might be that, or it might be
anything, or it might be nothing." With the exception of the _nothing_
clause, this is true, though Newton might have answered Horne by "Thou hast
said it."
(I thought everybody knew the meaning of "Thou hast said it": but I was
mistaken. In three of the evangelists [Greek: Su legeis] is the answer to
"Art thou a king?" The force of this answer, as always understood, is "That
is your way of putting it." The Puritans, who lived in Bible phrases, so
understood it: and Walter Scott, who caught all peculiarities of language
with great effect, makes a marked instance, "Were you armed?--I was not--I
went in my calling, as a preacher of God's word, to encourage them that
drew the sword in His cause. In other words, to aid and abet the rebels,
said the Duke. _Thou hast spoken it_, replied the prisoner.")
Again, Horne quotes Rowning[340] as follows:
{156}
"Mr. Rowning, pt. 2, p. 5 in a note, has a very pretty conceit upon this
same subject of attraction, about every particle of a fluid being
intrenched in three spheres of attraction and repulsion, one within
another, 'the innermost of which (he says) is a sphere of repulsion, which
keeps them from approaching into contact; the next, a sphere of attraction,
diffused around this of repulsion, by which the particles are disposed to
run together into drops; and the outermost of all, a sphere of repulsion,
whereby they repel each other, when removed out of the attraction.' So that
between the _urgings_, and _solicitations_, of one and t'other, a poor
unhappy particle must ever be at his wit's end, not knowing which way to
turn, or whom to obey first."
Rowning has here started the notion which Boscovich[341] afterwards
developed.
I may add to what precedes that it cannot be settled that, as Granger[342]
says, Desaguliers was the first who gave experimental lectures in London.
William Whiston gave some, and Francis Hauksbee[343] made the experiments.
The prospectus, as we should now call it, is extant, a quarto tract of
plates and descriptions, without date. Whiston, in his life, {157} gives
1714 as the first date of publication, and therefore, no doubt, of the
lectures. Desaguliers removed to London soon after 1712, and commenced his
lectures soon after that. It will be rather a nice point to settle which
lectured first; probabilities seem to go in favor of Whiston.