“It may be justly said,” observes Halley, “that so many and so valuable
philosophical truths as are herein discovered and put past dispute
were never yet owing to the capacity and industry of any one man.”
“The importance and generality of the discoveries,” says Laplace, “and
the immense number of original and profound views, which have been the
germ of the most brilliant theories of the philosophers of this (18th)
century, and all presented with much elegance, will ensure to the work
on the _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_ a preëminence
above all the other productions of human genius.”