牛顿其人/约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(翻译稿)


所有跟贴·加跟贴·新语丝读书论坛

送交者: zhoufangzhou 于 2017-02-11, 05:35:42:

(翻译稿可能与原文有不很精确的地方)

  我试图在牛顿自己的家中向你们讲述牛顿的真实形象,我确实有些怯意。很长时间以来,我一直埋首于牛顿的手稿之中;我早就打算将我的印象和心得写成一篇文稿,在1942年圣诞节——牛顿诞生300周年纪念会议上宣读。但战争剥夺了我来探讨这一如此重大主题的闲暇,也剥夺了我去查阅自己的图书文稿以便证实我的印象的机会。所以说,我将要在你们面前宣读的这篇短文,如果没有达到它本该达到的深度,我希望你们能谅解。
  预先再说明一点。我相信牛顿不是人们通常设想的那个样子。但我不相信他的伟大会因此削弱。他没有19世纪精心描绘出来的形象那么平常,事实上他更为超凡。天才都是极为特异的。希望这里没人会认为我是在用描述的手法来贬低剑桥最伟大的儿子。事实上,我是在努力像他的朋友和旧代人那样来看他,而他们无一例外地将其视为最伟大的人物之一。
  18世纪及其以降,牛顿就被认为是第一位,并且是最伟大的现代科学家,一位理性主义者,是他教导我们按照冷酷无情的推理方式来思考问题。
  我不这样看他。我不相信,有谁阅读过牛顿手稿箱中文本的人会这样看他;那个箱子是他在1696年最终离开剑桥时封装好的,现在已流传到我们手中,尽管其中部分手稿已经散落。牛顿不是理性时代的第一人。他是最后一位魔法师,最后一位巴比伦人和苏美尔人,最后一位像几千年前为我们的智力遗产奠立基础的先辈那样看待可见世界和思想世界的伟大心灵。艾萨克•牛顿,1642年圣诞节降生的遗腹子,是最后一位可以接受博士朝拜的神童。
  假如有时间,我很愿意向你们读读牛顿同代之人对其童年的记录。因为这份记录尽管传记作家相当熟悉,却从未完整地出版过——不加任何评论、原样地出版。这份记录确实是编织这位年轻魔法师传奇的素材,是描绘这位天才的开放心灵的最为欢快的一幅图像,它略去了这位年轻学子内心的不安、忧郁和神经质般的紧张。
  尽管用现代流行的术语来说,牛顿是一个严重的神经过敏者,并非不常见的那种;但我要说——依据历史材料——他是最为极端的一例。他的至深人性是玄奥的、隐秘的、遁世的,对于向世人袒露自己的思想、信仰和发现感到极度的恐惧。“我所知道的最忧虑、最谨慎、最多疑的性情”,惠斯顿(Whiston),这位卢卡斯讲座教授的继任者曾这样评论道。牛顿与胡克、弗拉姆斯蒂德(Flamsteed)和莱布尼兹之间广为人知的冲突和颇不光彩的争吵,明白无误地说明了这一点。像所有他这种类型的人一样,他完全远离女性。他不丢弃也不发表任何东西,除非在朋友们的极端压力之下。直到他生命的第二阶段为止,他都是一位专注的、神圣的孤独者,通过深刻的沉思(introspection)来从事自己的研究,其精神毅力或许无人能及。
  我相信,理解其心灵的线索.当在其全神贯注并且持之以恒的非凡的沉思能力之中找到。固然,我们有理由将其视为一个技艺高超的实验家,笛卡尔也可如此看待。牛顿孩童时代的机械发明的故事,是最迷人不过的了。他的望远镜和光学实验更是明证。这些无疑是他的核心性成就,是他那无可匹敌的全能技艺的一部分;但我确信,这些并不是出于他的独特天赋,特别是在他的同代人当中。他的独特天赋在于,他有能力在其内心中持久地抓住一个纯粹心智上的问题,直到彻底澄清它为止。我想,他的卓越要归功于天才人物所禀有的最强健最经久的直观力量。任何尝试过纯粹科学或哲学思考的人都知道,一个人何以能在自己的内心暂时抓住一个问题并且集中全部力量来突破它,它又将如何从你的头脑中消失,直至你发现你所审视的是一片空白。我相信牛顿能够连续数小时、数日,甚至数周在自己的心中紧紧抓住一个问题,直到该问题向他交出秘密为止。然后,作为一位超凡的数学技师,他将其包装起来,如你所愿,以便于解释和说明,但卓越不凡的是他的直觉。“如此陶醉于猜测之中,”德摩根(de Morgan)说,“以至于比起他有可能加以证明的东西来,好像知道得要多得多。”证明,不论其价值如何,我已说过,是随后装扮起来的——它们不是发现的工具。
  有一个故事,讲他告知哈雷关于行星运动的最基本发现之一的情形。“是的,”哈雷答道,“但你是怎么知道的呢?你已经证明了吗?”牛顿非常吃惊——“什么?我已经知道多年了,”他答道,“如果你给我几天时间,我肯定会找到一个证明。”他及时做到了。
  还有,有迹象表明,牛顿准备《原理》(指《自然哲学的数理原理》)时,在最紧要的关头被一道证明搁住了:如何证明我们可以把一个球体当成一个所有质量都集中在其中心的质点来处理呢?直至《原理》出版的前一年他才成功地找到一个证明。但他早就知道这是对的,并且多年来一直把它当作一个真定理来使用。
  毫无疑问,用来装扮《原理》阐释的特殊几何形式,与牛顿得出结论的心智过程没有任何相似之处。
  我猜想,他的试验通常不是发现的手段,而是证实他业已所知的东西的工具。
  为什么我称他为魔法师呢?因为在他看来,整个宇宙以及其中的万物只是一个谜语或一桩秘密,纯粹思考某些证据或迹象(evidence)——上帝有意布放在世界中以供哲学家作寻宝游戏的神秘线索——就能把它解读出来。他相信,这些线索部分可以在天空的迹象和元素的构成中找到(因此将他看作是一个试验自然哲学家是错误的),部分可以在通过教友流传至今的某些文献典籍中找到(这些典籍的传承从未中断,一直可以上溯至巴比伦的原始天启)。他把宇宙看作万能之主设置的密码,就像他自己在与莱布尼兹通信时将微积分的发现写成密码文一样。他相信,通过纯粹的思考,通过心灵的专注,这个谜语就会向受启者泄露自己的谜底。
  他确实解读了苍穹之谜。并且他相信,运用同样的沉思中的想像力,他也能解读上帝的秘密,解读神明预定的过去与未来事件的秘密,解读从初始未分化的第一物质到各种元素及其构成的秘密,解读健康与不朽的秘密。他相信,所有秘密都会向他显露,只要他能坚持到底,只要没有任何外来干扰:阅读抄写和试验一切都由他自己来做、无人进来打搅、严格对外保密、没有不谐和的阻拦或批评。他怀着恐惧与畏缩来探讨这些半命定半禁止的事物,如同回到母亲的子宫一样爬回上帝的怀抱。“独自航行在奇异的思想大海之上”,不是查尔斯•兰姆(Charles lamb)“那种只相信像三角形的三条边一样清楚的事物的家伙”。
  他就这样持续奋斗了大约25年。1687年,在他45岁的时候,《原理》出版了。
  在三一学院这里,向你们介绍他在作出最伟大成就的那些年是如何在你们周围生活的,最恰当不过了。教堂的东端比大门向东延伸得更远。在17世纪下半叶,三一大街和连接大门与教堂的建筑物之间的空地上,有一个带围墙的花园。南墙从大门的角塔伸向教堂,与教堂重叠的距离至少有现在人行道的宽度。因此,花园规模适度合理,正如洛根(Loggan)的版画清楚显示的那样。这是牛顿的花园。他拥有一套研究员房间,在大门门房和教堂之间——那套房子我想现在是布罗德(Broad)教授住着。花园连着一个楼梯,通往木柱支起的阳台,阳台从建筑区凸向花园。楼梯的顶部支着他的望远镜——请不要与牛顿在世之时(但离开剑桥以后)设立在大门顶部的观测台相混,那是供罗吉尔•科茨(Roger Cotes)和牛顿的继任者惠斯顿使用的。这个木建筑物,我想是惠威尔(Whewell)1856年拆除的,代之以布罗德教授的石凸窗。花园的教堂那头是一个很小的二层建筑,也是木制的,那是牛顿的实验室。当他决定准备出版《原理》时,他雇用了一位年轻的男性亲戚汉弗瑞•牛顿(Humphrey Newton)来做抄写员(《原理》手稿在付梓时显然在汉弗瑞手中)。汉弗瑞与他一起呆了5年,从1684年到1689年。牛顿去世时,汉弗瑞的女婿康迪特(Conduitt)写信问他回忆录之事,我收集的手稿中就有汉弗瑞的回信。
  在这25年全神贯注的研究中,数学和天文学只是其事业的一部分,或许还不是他最投入的那部分。我们有关这些的记录几乎完全局限于他离开剑桥前去伦敦时保存在那个手稿箱中的文稿。
  让我对这些文稿的主题作些简要提示。它们的数量极其巨大——我敢说留存至今的手稿在100万字以上。无疑,除了作为辅助我们理解这位最伟大的天才的心灵的迷人的侧光灯之外,它们没有多少实质性的价值。
  且让我不要夸大其辞来反驳过去两个世纪精心创造出来的那个牛顿神话。他的疯狂极其有条不紊。他所有未发表的关于神秘事物和神学的著作,都带有这样的标记:精致的学识、准确的方法和极为严肃的陈述。假如它们的内容和目标不是魔法性质的,它们就会像《原理》一样健全和明智。它们都是在他进行数学研究的那个25年内写成的,可以分为几大类。
  牛顿很早就在三一学院放弃了正统的信仰。当时在知识分子圈中,索奇尼派(Socinian)是一位重要的阿里乌斯教授。牛顿可能会受到索奇尼派的影响,但我想他没有。他不如说是一位迈蒙尼德学派的犹太一神论者。他得出这一结论,不是基于比如说理性的或怀疑的立场,而是完全基于古代权威著作的诠释。他相信,天启的文献根本不支持三位一体教义,它是后来伪造的。从天国向我们显现的上帝只有一位。
  但这是一个可怕的秘密,牛顿怀着绝望的痛苦终身将其隐藏在内心。这就是他拒绝圣职的原因,为此他必须得到特许以保住自己的研究员和卢卡斯讲座教授的职位,并且不能担任三一学院的院长。甚至1689年的宽容法案也把反三位一体论者排除在外。流言是有一些,但不是在最危险的时期,不是在他担任三一学院的年轻研究员的时候。他大体上将这个秘密带进了坟墓。但他的手稿箱中的大量手稿泄露了这一秘密。在他死后,霍斯雷(Horsley)主教受命检查这个手稿箱,希望将它们出版。他看过内容之后万分惊恐,砰然将其合上。百年之后,大卫•布鲁斯特(David Brewster)爵士再次查看了这个手稿箱。通过精心选择和摘录,加上一些严肃的小谎言,他将那些痕迹掩盖了起来。最近的传记作家莫尔(More)先生更坦诚一些。牛顿大量反三位一体的文章,在我看来,是其未出版的手稿中最为有趣的部分。除了他的更为严肃的信仰宣言之外,我还有他的一篇完整文章,表明了牛顿认为哪些记录是极端不诚实的和伪造的。他认为,圣•阿塔纳修斯(St.Athanasius)对此负有责任,特别是诽谤阿里乌斯死于厕所一事。7世纪下半叶英格兰三位一体论者的胜利,不仅是彻底的,而且是辉煌的,就像圣•阿塔纳修斯当初大获全胜一样。有充足的理由认为,洛克是一神论者。我还见过有人论证弥尔顿也是一神论者。牛顿的记录中有一个污点:他的卢卡斯讲座教授的继任者惠斯顿因为公开承认自己的观点——那是牛顿在内心已经隐藏了50年以上的秘密——而失去了教授席位并被逐出了大学,可牛顿当时一言不发。
  保有这一异端信仰,进一步加剧了他的沉默、守密和内向的性情。
  手稿中的另一大类涉及所有门类的天启作品,从中他试图推想出宇宙的隐秘真理——所罗门圣殿的规模、大卫书、启示录以及大量其他著作,其中部分著作是在其晚年出版的。与此相随的是数百页教会史之类的手稿,意在发现口头流传下来的教义的真理。
  再有一大类,从笔迹上判断应是最早期的,与炼金术相关——嬗变、哲人石和长生药。几乎所有检查过这些手稿的人,对其范围和性质不是秘而不宣,就是轻描淡写。大约1650年左右,伦敦有一个相当可观的团体,以出版商库珀(Cooper)为中心。他们在随后20年中不仅复兴了人们对15世纪英格兰炼金术士的兴趣,而且复兴了人们对中世纪以及中世纪之后炼金术士的译作的兴趣。
  剑桥图书馆藏有大量早期英格兰炼金术士的手稿。看来,剑桥大学内有个未曾中断的秘密传统,并且在1650~1670年间再度活跃起来。无论如何,牛顿显然已沉溺其中不能自拔。就在其撰写《原理》的那几年,每年的“春季6周和秋季6周”他完全沉浸在炼金术的研究之中,“实验室的炉火几乎未曾熄灭过”——这些他对汉弗瑞只字未提。再者,牛顿全身心投入的,不是需要慎重考虑的试验,而是致力于解读传统之谜,发现隐秘诗句的含义,重复以往世纪的初创者声称做过的但实际上大多是想像的试验。关于这些研究,牛顿留下了大量的记录。我相信,这些记录的大部分是他从已有的书籍和手稿之中翻译和抄录出来的。尽管如此,实验记录的数量仍然相当大。我浏览过不少——我想至少有10万字。无可否认,这些手稿完全是魔法性的,完全缺乏科学价值;同样无可否认的是,牛顿经年累月全身心投入其中。未来要是有某位学子,比我训练有素也比我更悠闲,来厘清牛顿与该传统以及同时代的抄本之间的精确关系,虽说无益,当是非常有趣的。
  在这些异质的和超凡的研究中,牛顿度过了人生的第一阶段——做出了全部重大工作的三一学院阶段,一只脚踏在中世纪,另一只脚为现代科学踩出了道路。现在让我们转到第二阶段。
  《原理》出版后,他的习惯和生活方式有了彻底的变化。我想是他的朋友,特别是哈利法克斯(Halifax),得出了这样的结论:他必须彻底摆脱在三一学院所过的生活,否则他的身心很快就会衰竭。总而言之,或是出于自己的动机,或是受到朋友的劝说,他抛弃了自己的研究。他接手了大学事务,在议会里代表大学;他的朋友在四处奔走,力图为他找到一个地位尊贵、酬金丰厚的职位——国王学院院长、查特豪斯公立学校校长、造币厂总监。
  牛顿不可能担任三一学院的院长,因为他是一位一神论者,并因此未受圣职。他落选国王学院的院长,理由几近无聊,就因为他不是伊顿公学出身。对于国王学院的拒绝,牛顿极为不快,并且准备了一份长长的诉讼备要(现在在我手中),列举出他担任该院院长不是不合法的理由。不幸的是,牛顿获得院长提名之时,正值国王学院决定对抗国王的提名权,而这场斗争学院获得了胜利。
  牛顿足以胜任上述任何一项职位。诚然,牛顿性情内向,喜爱独处,一贯守口如瓶,每每心不在焉,但绝不能由此推论出,他缺乏处理自己选择从事的事务的能力。许多记录都证明了他的伟大能力。读一读他与副校长柯维尔(Covell)博士的通信就知道,那是他作为大学的议会代表期间,为处理1688年革命后棘手的宣誓问题而写的。他与佩皮斯(Pepys)和洛恩德斯(Lowndes)一起成了最伟大、最有成效的公务员之一。他是一位极其成功的投资者,克服了南海泡沫危机,离世时相当富有。他拥有几乎所有种类的罕见智力才能——律师、史学家、神学家,而不仅仅是数学家、物理学家、天文学家。
  当他的生活转变来临之际,当他将自己的魔法之书装箱之后,他就很容易将17世纪置诸身后,从而演化成18世纪的形象,传统中的牛顿形象。
  然而,他的朋友们劝其改变生活的建议来得太晚了。1689年,他深深依恋的母亲去世了。1692年圣诞节他50岁生日的前后,他得了我们现在所称的严重的精神失常。精神忧郁、失眠、受迫害的恐惧——他给佩皮斯、洛克,无疑也给其他人写信,致使他们都认为他的心智已经错乱。用他自己的话说,“他失去了往昔那种心智上的一致性”。他再也没有像从前那样集中精力,也没有做出任何新颖的工作。精神失常大概持续了将近两年;失常之后,尽管有轻微的疯癫(“gaga”),却仍然是英格兰最强有力的心灵之一,传说中的艾萨克•牛顿爵士。
  1696年,他的朋友们终于成功地将他挖出了剑桥。在随后的20余年里,在他的同代人看来,他就像君王一样居住在伦敦,是那个时代、是整个欧洲最为知名的人物。当他的力量日渐衰退、性情变得更为和蔼的时候,同代之人甚至认为,他或许是一切时代最知名的人物。
  他开始有了自己的家,和他的外甥女凯瑟琳•巴顿(Catharine Baton)住在一起。凯瑟琳无疑是牛顿在剑桥读书时的密友,也是他日后一贯忠诚的朋友、财政大臣哈利法克斯伯爵查尔斯•蒙塔古(Charles Montague,Earl of Halifax)的情人。在康格里夫(Congreve)、斯威夫特和蒲伯的笔下,凯瑟琳是伦敦最灿烂、最迷人的女性之一。斯威夫特的《献给斯特拉的日记》(Journal to Stella),使她的故事广为人知,从而大大提高了她的知名度。这些年,牛顿还是中等个,体重倒是增加了不少。“当他乘坐四轮大马车时,两只胳膊都要伸到马车外面去。”脱掉假发之后,满头雪白的头发,令人肃然起敬。粉红色的面容,益发显得仁慈而又庄严。在三一学院的后堂,安妮女王一天晚上为他加封了爵位。将近24年,他一直担任皇家学会的主席。对所有来访的外国知识分子来讲,他成了伦敦的一道主要风景,而他也慷慨地款待他们。他喜欢身边有聪明的年轻人来做《原理》各种新版本的编辑工作——有时只是一些能说会道的年轻人,法齐奥•德•杜里埃(Facio de Dullier)就是一例。
  魔法已然忘却。他业已成为理性时代的圣贤和君王。正统的艾萨克•牛顿爵士形象——18世纪的艾萨克爵士形象,正在树立起来,它与17世纪上半叶出生的那个孩提魔法师几乎没有任何关联。伏尔泰在伦敦之旅的回程之中就这样报道艾萨克爵士:“那是他特有的福分,不仅出生在一个自由的国家,而且出生在一个扫除了一切经院颟顸(糊涂,不明事理)的时代。唯有理性获得了培育;人类只能是他的学生,而不是他的敌人。”牛顿,就这样隐瞒了自己内心的异端思想和经院信念,那可是他毕生探究的问题!
  但他再也没有聚精会神过,再也没有恢复“往昔那种心智上的一致性”。“他在众人面前讲话很少”,“他的表情和举止总显得有些倦怠”。
  我想,他极少查看那个箱子,那里藏有他离开剑桥时装进去的、曾经在其位于大门和教堂之间的房间、花园和实验室里占满了他的头脑、汲尽了他的热情的事物的所有证据。
  但他没有毁掉它们。它们躺在箱中,令所有18和19世纪的窥视者惊骇无比。它们成了凯瑟琳•巴顿的财产,随后被其女儿普茨茅斯伯爵夫人(the Countess of Portsmouth)所继承。牛顿箱中所藏的数百万字未发表的手稿,就这样变成了“普茨茅斯手稿”。
  1888年,数学部分捐给了剑桥大学图书馆。这部分已被编目,但从未有过编辑。剩下的,非常庞大的数量,被凯瑟琳•巴顿的后代,也就是现在的莱明顿勋爵(Lord Lymington),于1936年在拍卖行里分散拍卖了。这一不肖之举,令我深感不安。我渐渐设法收集到散落手稿的半数左右,包括几乎整个传记部分,即“康迪特手稿”,目的是将其带回剑桥,并且希望它们永远不会离去。其余大部分被一家辛迪加所攫取,非我的能力所及;这家辛迪加希望借近期300年祭的机会高价出售,可能是在美国。
  当一个人盘思这些怪异的收藏品时,似乎就比较容易理解——在另一方向不加歪曲地理解——这个奇特的灵魂:他受到了魔鬼的诱惑,当他在这些围墙之内解决如此众多的问题时,相信自已利用纯粹的心智力量就能破解上帝与自然的所有秘密——集哥白尼与浮士德于一身。

英文原文:

John Maynard Keynes: Newton, the Man
The Royal Society of London planned an event to celebrate the tercentenary of Isaac Newton's birth in 1942. However World War II made it essentially impossible and the celebrations did not take place until July 1946. Lectures were given by E N da Costa Andrade, H W Turnbull, Niels Bohr and Jacques Hadamard. John Maynard Keynes had also been invited to lecture but unfortunately he died in April 1946, three months before the celebrations took place. Keynes was fascinated by Newton's manuscripts and had been the first person to see some of the manuscript material by Newton which had been kept secret until his papers were sold in 1936. Keynes' lecture, Newton, the man was delivered at the celebrations by his brother Geoffrey Keynes. Here is the text of the lecture:
Newton, the Man
John Maynard Keynes

It is with some diffidence that I try to speak to you in his own home of Newton as he was himself. I have long been a student of the records and had the intention to put my impressions into writing to be ready for Christmas Day 1942, the tercentenary of his birth. The war has deprived me both of leisure to treat adequately so great a theme and of opportunity to consult my library and my papers and to verify my impressions. So if the brief study which I shall lay before you today is more perfunctory than it should be, I hope you will excuse me.
One other preliminary matter. I believe that Newton was different from the conventional picture of him. But I do not believe he was less great. He was less ordinary, more extraordinary, than the nineteenth century cared to make him out. Geniuses are very peculiar. Let no one here suppose that my object today is to lessen, by describing, Cambridge's greatest son. I am trying rather to see him as his own friends and contemporaries saw him. And they without exception regarded him as one of the greatest of men.
In the eighteenth century and since, Newton came to be thought of as the first and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untinctured reason.
I do not see him in this light. I do not think that any one who has pored over the contents of that box which he packed up when he finally left Cambridge in 1696 and which, though partly dispersed, have come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child bom with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.
Had there been time, I should have liked to read to you the contemporary record of the child Newton. For, though it is well known to his biographers, it has never been published in extenso, without comment, just as it stands. Here, indeed, is the makings of a legend of the young magician, a most joyous picture of the opening mind of genius free from the uneasiness, the melancholy and nervous agitation of the young man and student.
For in vulgar modern terms Newton was profoundly neurotic of a not unfamiliar type, but - I should say from the records - a most extreme example. His deepest instincts were occult, esoteric, semantic-with profound shrinking from the world, a paralyzing fear of exposing his thoughts, his beliefs, his discoveries in all nakedness to the inspection and criticism of the world. 'Of the most fearful, cautious and suspicious temper that I ever knew', said Whiston, his successor in the Lucasian Chair. The too well-known conflicts and ignoble quarrels with Hooke, Flamsteed, Leibniz are only too clear an evidence of this. Like all his type he was wholly aloof from women. He parted with and published nothing except under the extreme pressure of friends. Until the second phase of his life, he was a wrapt, consecrated solitary, pursuing his studies by intense introspection with a mental endurance perhaps never equalled.
I believe that the clue to his mind is to be found in his unusual powers of continuous concentrated introspection. A case can be made out, as it also can with Descartes, for regarding him as an accomplished experimentalist. Nothing can be more charming than the tales of his mechanical contrivances when he was a boy. There are his telescopes and his optical experiments, These were essential accomplishments, part of his unequalled all-round technique, but not, I am sure, his peculiar gift, especially amongst his contemporaries. His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had seen straight through it. I fancy his pre-eminence is due to his muscles of intuition being the strongest and most enduring with which a man has ever been gifted. Anyone who has ever attempted pure scientific or philosophical thought knows how one can hold a problem momentarily in one's mind and apply all one's powers of concentration to piercing through it, and how it will dissolve and escape and you find that what you are surveying is a blank. I believe that Newton could hold a problem in his mind for hours and days and weeks until it surrendered to him its secret. Then being a supreme mathematical technician he could dress it up, how you will, for purposes of exposition, but it was his intuition which was pre-eminently extraordinary - 'so happy in his conjectures', said De Morgan, 'as to seem to know more than he could possibly have any means of proving'. The proofs, for what they are worth, were, as I have said, dressed up afterwards - they were not the instrument of discovery.
There is the story of how he informed Halley of one of his most fundamental discoveries of planetary motion. 'Yes,' replied Halley, 'but how do you know that? Have you proved it?' Newton was taken aback - 'Why, I've known it for years', he replied. 'If you'll give me a few days, I'll certainly find you a proof of it' - as in due course he did.
Again, there is some evidence that Newton in preparing the Principia was held up almost to the last moment by lack of proof that you could treat a solid sphere as though all its mass was concentrated at the centre, and only hit on the proof a year before publication. But this was a truth which he had known for certain and had always assumed for many years.
Certainly there can be no doubt that the peculiar geometrical form in which the exposition of the Principia is dressed up bears no resemblance at all to the mental processes by which Newton actually arrived at his conclusions.
His experiments were always, I suspect, a means, not of discovery, but always of verifying what he knew already.
Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements (and that is what gives the false suggestion of his being an experimental natural philosopher), but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation in Babylonia. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty - just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibniz. By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.
He did read the riddle of the heavens. And he believed that by the same powers of his introspective imagination he would read the riddle of the Godhead, the riddle of past and future events divinely fore-ordained, the riddle of the elements and their constitution from an original undifferentiated first matter, the riddle of health and of immortality. All would be revealed to him if only he could persevere to the end, uninterrupted, by himself, no one coming into the room, reading, copying, testing-all by himself, no interruption for God's sake, no disclosure, no discordant breakings in or criticism, with fear and shrinking as he assailed these half-ordained, half-forbidden things, creeping back into the bosom of the Godhead as into his mother's womb. 'Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone', not as Charles Lamb 'a fellow who believed nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle'.
And so he continued for some twenty-five years. In 1687, when he was forty-five years old, the Principia was published.
Here in Trinity it is right that I should give you an account of how he lived amongst you during these years of his greatest achievement. The east end of the Chapel projects farther eastwards than the Great Gate. In the second half of the seventeenth century there was a walled garden in the free space between Trinity Street and the building which joins the Great Gate to the Chapel. The south wall ran out from the turret of the Gate to a distance overlapping the Chapel by at least the width of the present pavement. Thus the garden was of modest but reasonable size. This was Newton's garden. He had the Fellow's set of rooms between the Porter's Lodge and the Chapel - that, I suppose, now occupied by Professor Broad. The garden was reached by a stairway which was attached to a veranda raised on wooden pillars projecting into the garden from the range of buildings. At the top of this stairway stood his telescope - not to be confused with the observatory erected on the top of the Great Gate during Newton's lifetime (but after he had left Cambridge) for the use of Roger Cotes and Newton's successor, Whiston. This wooden erection was, I think, demolished by Whewell in 1856 and replaced by the stone bay of Professor Broad's bedroom. At the Chapel end of the garden was a small two-storied building, also of wood, which was his elaboratory. When he decided to prepare the Principia for publication he engaged a young kinsman, Humphrey Newton, to act as his amanuensis (the MS. of the Principia, as it went to the press, is clearly in the hand of Humphrey). Humphrey remained with him for five years - from 1684 to 1689. When Newton died Humphrey's son-in-law Conduitt wrote to him for his reminiscences, and among the papers I have is Humphrey's reply.
During these twenty-five years of intense study mathematics and astronomy were only a part, and perhaps not the most absorbing, of his occupations. Our record of these is almost wholly confined to the papers which he kept and put in his box when he left Trinity for London.
Let me give some brief indications of their subject. They are enormously voluminous - I should say that upwards of 1,000,000 words in his handwriting still survive. They have, beyond doubt, no substantial value whatever except as a fascinating sidelight on the mind of our greatest genius.
Let me not exaggerate through reaction against the other Newton myth which has been so sedulously created for the last two hundred years. There was extreme method in his madness. All his unpublished works on esoteric and theological matters are marked by careful learning, accurate method and extreme sobriety of statement. They are just as sane as the Principia, if their whole matter and purpose were not magical. They were nearly all composed during the same twenty-five years of his mathematical studies. They fall into several groups.
Very early in life Newton abandoned orthodox belief in the Trinity. At this time the Socinians were an important Arian sect amongst intellectual circles. It may be that Newton fell under Socinian influences, but I think not. He was rather a Judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides. He arrived at this conclusion, not on so-to-speak rational or sceptical grounds, but entirely on the interpretation of ancient authority. He was persuaded that the revealed documents give no support to the Trinitarian doctrines which were due to late falsifications. The revealed God was one God.
For some of Newton's arguments, see our article Newton the Arian
But this was a dreadful secret which Newton was at desperate pains to conceal all his life. It was the reason why he refused Holy Orders, and therefore had to obtain a special dispensation to hold his Fellowship and Lucasian Chair and could not be Master of Trinity. Even the Toleration Act of 1689 excepted anti-Trinitarians. Some rumours there were, but not at the dangerous dates when he was a young Fellow of Trinity. In the main the secret died with him. But it was revealed in many writings in his, big box. After his death Bishop Horsley was asked to inspect the box with a view to publication. He saw the contents with horror and slammed the lid. A hundred years later Sir David Brewster looked into the box. He covered up the traces with carefully selected extracts and some straight fibbing. His latest biographer, Mr More, has been more candid. Newton's extensive anti-Trinitarian pamphlets are, in my judgement, the most interesting of his unpublished papers. Apart from his more serious affirmation of belief, I have a completed pamphlet showing up what Newton thought of the extreme dishonesty and falsification of records for which St Athanasius was responsible, in particular for his putting about the false calumny that Arius died in a privy. The victory of the Trinitarians in England in the latter half of the seventeenth century was not only as complete, but also as extraordinary, as St Athanasius's original triumph. There is good reason for thinking that Locke was a Unitarian. I have seen it argued that Milton was. It is a blot on Newton's record that he did not murmur a word when Whiston, his successor in the Lucasian Chair, was thrown out of his professorship and out of the University for publicly avowing opinions which Newton himself had secretly held for upwards of fifty years past.
That he held this heresy was a further aggravation of his silence and secrecy and inwardness of disposition.
Another large section is concerned with all branches of apocalyptic writings from which he sought to deduce the secret truths of the Universe - the measurements of Solomon's Temple, the Book of David, the Book of Revelations, an enormous volume of work of which some part was published in his later days. Along with this are hundreds of pages of Church History and the like, designed to discover the truth of tradition.
A large section, judging by the handwriting amongst the earliest, relates to alchemy - transmutation, the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life. The scope and character of these papers have been hushed up, or at least minimized, by nearly all those who have inspected them. About 1650 there was a considerable group in London, round the publisher Cooper, who during the next twenty years revived interest not only in the English alchemists of the fifteenth century, but also in translations of the medieval and post-medieval alchemists.
There is an unusual number of manuscripts of the early English alchemists in the libraries of Cambridge. It may be that there was some continuous esoteric tradition within the University which sprang into activity again in the twenty years from 1650 to 1670. At any rate, Newton was clearly an unbridled addict. It is this with which he was occupied 'about 6 weeks at spring and 6 at the fall when the fire in the elaboratory scarcely went out' at the very years when he was composing the Principia - and about this he told Humphrey Newton not a word. Moreover, he was almost entirely concerned, not in serious experiment, but in trying to read the riddle of tradition, to find meaning in cryptic verses, to imitate the alleged but largely imaginary experiments of the initiates of past centuries. Newton has left behind him a vast mass of records of these studies. I believe that the greater part are translations and copies made by him of existing books and manuscripts. But there are also extensive records of experiments. I have glanced through a great quantity of this at least 100,000 words, I should say. It is utterly impossible to deny that it is wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value; and also impossible not to admit that Newton devoted years of work to it. Some time it might be interesting, but not useful, for some student better equipped and more idle than I to work out Newton's exact relationship to the tradition and MSS. of his time.
In these mixed and extraordinary studies, with one foot in the Middle Ages and one foot treading a path for modern science, Newton spent the first phase of his life, the period of life in Trinity when he did all his real work. Now let me pass to the second phase.
After the publication of the Principia there is a complete change in his habit and way of life. I believe that his friends, above all Halifax, came to the conclusion that he must be rooted out of the life he was leading at Trinity which must soon lead to decay of mind and health. Broadly speaking, of his own motion or under persuasion, he abandons his studies. He takes up University business, represents the University in Parliament; his friends are busy trying to get a dignified and remunerative job for him - the Provostship of King's, the Mastership of Charterhouse, the Controllership of the Mint.
Newton could not be Master of Trinity because he was a Unitarian and so not in Holy Orders. He was rejected as Provost of King's for the more prosaic reason that he was not an Etonian. Newton took this rejection very ill and prepared a long legalistic brief, which I possess, giving reasons why it was not unlawful for him to be accepted as Provost. But, as ill-luck had it, Newton's nomination for the Provostship came at the moment when King's had decided to fight against the right of Crown nomination, a struggle in which the College was successful.
Newton was well qualified for any of these offices. It must not be inferred from his introspection, his absent-mindedness, his secrecy and his solitude that he lacked aptitude for affairs when he chose to exercise it. There are many records to prove his very great capacity. Read, for example, his correspondence with Dr Covell, the Vice-Chancellor when, as the University's representative in Parliament, he had to deal with the delicate question of the oaths after the revolution of 1688. With Pepys and Lowndes he became one of the greatest and most efficient of our civil servants. He was a very successful investor of funds, surmounting the crisis of the South Sea Bubble, and died a rich man. He possessed in exceptional degree almost every kind of intellectual aptitude - lawyer, historian, theologian, not less than mathematician, physicist, astronomer.
And when the turn of his life came and he put his books of magic back into the box, it was easy for him to drop the seventeenth century behind him and to evolve into the eighteenth-century figure which is the traditional Newton.
Nevertheless, the move on the part of his friends to change his life came almost too late. In 1689 his mother, to whom he was deeply attached, died. Somewhere about his fiftieth birthday on Christmas Day 1692, he suffered what we should now term a severe nervous breakdown. Melancholia, sleeplessness, fears of persecution - he writes to Pepys and to Locke and no doubt to others letters which lead them to think that his mind is deranged. He lost, in his own words, the 'former consistency of his mind'. He never again concentrated after the old fashion or did any fresh work. The breakdown probably lasted nearly two years, and from it emerged, slightly 'gaga', but still, no doubt, with one of the most powerful minds of England, the Sir Isaac Newton of tradition.
In 1696 his friends were finally successful in digging him out of Cambridge, and for more than another twenty years he reigned in London as the most famous man of his age, of Europe, and - as his powers gradually waned and his affability increased - perhaps of all time, so it seemed to his contemporaries.
He set up house with his niece Catharine Barton, who was beyond reasonable doubt the mistress of his old and loyal friend Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax and Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had been one of Newton's intimate friends when he was an undergraduate at Trinity. Catharine was reputed to be one of the most brilliant and charming women in the London of Congreve, Swift and Pope. She is celebrated, not least for the broadness of her stories, in Swift's Journal to Stella. Newton puts on rather too much weight for his moderate height. 'When he rode in his coach one arm would be out of his coach on one side and the other on the other.' His pink face, beneath a mass of snow-white hair, which 'when his peruke was off was a venerable sight', is increasingly both benevolent and majestic. One night in Trinity after Hall he is knighted by Queen Anne. For nearly twenty-four years he reigns as President of the Royal Society. He becomes one of the principal sights of London for all visiting intellectual foreigners, whom he entertains handsomely. He liked to have clever young men about him to edit new editions of the Principia - and sometimes merely plausible ones as in the case of Facio de Duillier.
Magic was quite forgotten. He has become the Sage and Monarch of the Age of Reason. The Sir Isaac Newton of orthodox tradition - the eighteenth-century Sir Isaac, so remote from the child magician born in the first half of the seventeenth century - was being built up. Voltaire returning from his trip to London was able to report of Sir Isaac - 'twas his peculiar felicity, not only to be born in a country of liberty, but in an Age when all scholastic impertinences were banished from the World. Reason alone was cultivated and Mankind could only be his Pupil, not his Enemy.' Newton, whose secret heresies and scholastic superstitions it had been the study of a lifetime to conceal!
But he never concentrated, never recovered 'the former consistency of his mind'. 'He spoke very little in company.' 'He had something rather languid in his look and manner.'
And he looked very seldom, I expect, into the chest where, when he left Cambridge, he had packed all the evidences of what had occupied and so absorbed his intense and flaming spirit in his rooms and his garden and his elaboratory between the Great Gate and Chapel.
But he did not destroy them. They remained in the box to shock profoundly any eighteenth- or nineteenth-century prying eyes. They became the possession of Catharine Barton and then of her daughter, the Countess of Portsmouth. So Newton's chest, with many hundreds of thousands of words of his unpublished writings, came to contain the 'Portsmouth Papers'.
In 1888 the mathematical portion was given to the University Library at Cambridge. They have been indexed, but they have never been edited. The rest, a very large collection, were dispersed in the auction room in 1936 by Catharine Barton's descendant, the present Lord Lymington. Disturbed by this impiety, I managed gradually to reassemble about half of them, including nearly the whole of the biographical portion, that is, the 'Conduitt Papers', in order to bring them to Cambridge which I hope they will never leave. The greater part of the rest were snatched out of my reach by a syndicate which hoped to sell them at a high price, probably in America, on the occasion of the recent tercentenary.
As one broods over these queer collections, it seems easier to understand - with an understanding which is not, I hope, distorted in the other direction - this strange spirit, who was tempted by the Devil to believe at the time when within these walls. he was solving so much, that he could reach all the secrets of God and Nature by the pure power of mind Copernicus and Faustus in one.




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