4.
However, Newton's system of mathematical
physics (Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica,
1687) was
going to offer a fuller and more lasting
satisfaction to both the types of
minds defined above.
Newton as a scientist—prudent and
modest—seems to
have been at first a mathematician preoccupied
with
giving not an exhaustive explanation of the universe
but a simple
and elegant equation. He was also a
religious man and wished to show the
necessity of a
permanent divine activity in the construction and
working of the world-machine. He did not seem to
have foreseen the many
consequences of his theory that
were often in conflict with one another.
To the classical type of imagination Newton offered
certainty and balance;
real space and real motion in
relation to really immutable points; independent sys-
tems, each being supported by a practically fixed lumi-
nous body (a sun), around which dark bodies
revolve
at wisely measured distances, all arranged by an infal-
lible Governor who is ready to repair
any alteration.
Thus, he offered harmony in motion, not so different
from the Great Platonic Dance. But above all, his
system is charming for
the wonderful simplicity of its
resources: once the Universe is set in
motion by the
initial push which inertia perpetuates, a single force
suffices thereafter, namely, “universal attraction.”
From the Atomists and from Descartes, Newton in-
herited a unified idea of matter to which a universal
law could
be applied; now the latter did not end up
with complications and disorder,
as Cartesian me-
chanics did, but resulted in
a more satisfying harmony.
The limitless character of this universe no
longer con-
tradicts classical taste,
henceforth adapted to the Infi-
nite for
various reasons. Philosophical reflection from
Bruno to Henry More made
acceptable, especially to
the British, the idea that an infinite God could
find
his perfect image in an infinite creation. On their side
the
Cartesians believed that the simplicity and rigor
of laws could suffice to
assure the unity of a boundless
universe. The natural bent of their minds
was to em-
phasize among Newton's classical
disciples the reassur-
ing stability of this
system as well as its unifying char-
acter. In
the eighteenth century theories abounded in
attempts to reduce the two laws
of motion to a single
one, and Louis de Tressan (1783) already utilized
for
this purpose an electric fluid as a universal agent.
Now the romantic mind found in the Newtonian
world a still more complete
satisfaction. The imagina-
tion in search of
liberty and free flight found in
Newton's space a propitious and exalting
medium.
Among the independent systems, all related to ours and
yet
different from ours, in which we can imagine an
infinite variety of living
forms, suited to delight the
human visitor, large spaces open up which
evoke not
a dark and dry abyss, but a peaceful ocean welcoming
the
navigator. The Void assured the elasticity of a very
tenuous ether and the
smoothness of celestial motion;
it is bathed by an omnipresent Light, and
especially
by the “very subtle Spirit” which Newton
inherited
from Henry More and which, from the depth of
Newton's
thought, assured the transmission of this
unexplained force of Attraction.
The contemporaries
and successors of Newton went much farther and
imagined worlds related to one another by mysterious
life-messengers:
imperishable seeds. The idea came
from a fanciful cosmologist who had been
speaking for
Descartes, namely, B. de Maillet (Telliamed, 1748); but
Newton's system contributed to the success of
this
fascinating dream, which was to be revived in the
twentieth century by the Swedish astronomer Svante
Arrhenius
(The Evolution of Worlds, 1907). Thus
Newton's
system stirred the bold imagination of those
who had inherited that proud
confidence in the worth
of man which inspired the Renaissance and burst
out
afresh in the eighteenth century. Newton is responsible
for the
cosmic voyages of the mind which have multi-
plied in poetry and fiction.
Furthermore, Newton brought about the triumph of
a new pathos of dynamism.
Universal gravitation for
the first time gave a universal value to the idea
of mass:
the ancient and medieval celestial bodies were weight-
less. Now, the Creator became the
athlete who shapes
and hurls these cannonballs. His poetic emblem is
no
longer Milton's compass but Edward Young's scale-
balance (Night Thoughts,
1742-44). If the classical
mind tends to reduce to unity the agent of
universal
motion, the romantic mind tends to polarize the world
and
insists on seeing a conflict between the two forces,
repulsion and
attraction. In contrast to Newton, the
romantic mind tends to make of both
repulsion and
attraction forces which, though working in exactly
opposite directions, have the same nature; just as inex-
plicable on the physical plane as they appear
similar
to psychical forces—Love and Hate—a view
which
Empedocles had already declared.
According to H. Metzger, whom we follow here,
the paradoxical force of
attraction, which mysteriously
acts at a distance, owed its career
precisely to this
unconscious or conscious assimilation by the imagina-
tion. The idea that a thing is
attracted by what it
resembles is also part of the primitive mentality;
the
“active power of desire” experienced within us
directly
is easily transferred to the external world. By reversing
this transfer the romantic imagination went on to see
in human love a
particular case of the universal law
of Attraction. This confusion already
inspired the sys-
tem of R. G. Boscovich
(Theoria philosophia naturalis,
1758) and
prevailed as late as the works of the astrono-
mer Camille Flammarion.
The equilibrium of the two forces, an equilibrium
so dear to classical
minds, was capable of being shaken
by the baroque imagination in love with
conflict and
in a close conspiracy with cataclysmic catastrophes.
Attraction and repulsion could take turns in triumph-
ing, the first reducing the world to a fabulously
dense
molecule, the second expanding it and scattering it
anew, all
this in accordance with a rhythm of alternat-
ing expansion and contraction: a dynamic and spatial
variant of the
ancient “Eternal Return,” an idea which
has had an
influential career since the middle of the
eighteenth century, enjoying
favor that has lasted down
to our own times, thanks to the theory of the
expanding
universe.
