At the end of last week there was a worthy
com- memoration at Grantham of the bicentenary of the death of Isaac Newton, and many of those who took part in the commemoration visited Newton's birthplace, Woolsthorpe Manor, a few miles south of Grantham. Although we are living in days of immense scientific discovery in which the whole conception of the universe has been not only overhauled but indefinitely enlarged, it is right and necessary to look upon Newton as the inspirer of all modern scientific thought. His law of gravity has never been shaken, and is not at all likely to be shaken even in respect of the universe as it is conceived in the light of the latest knowledge. There has never been a man of such brilliant imagination who was so strictly ruled by his sense of what was practical and credible. In every domain of life he showed this rare alliance of powers. He showed it as much in writing the Principia as in facing the .terrible Judge Jeffreys to state a University grievance. Amazingly fertile in ideas he never asked a human being either to believe what was not made credible or to do what was not proved practicable.
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