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."