Napoleon Bonaparte (New York, 1904), Vol. 1, chap. 10.
[1002]. The name of Sir Isaac Newton has by general consent been placed at the head of those great men who have been the ornaments of their species.... The philosopher [Laplace], indeed, to whom posterity will probably assign a place next to Newton, has characterized the Principia as pre-eminent above all the productions of human intellect.—Brewster, D.
Life of Sir Isaac Newton (London, 1831), pp. 1, 2.
[1003]. Newton and Laplace need myriads of ages and thick-strewn celestial areas. One may say a gravitating solar system is already prophesied in the nature of Newton’s mind.—Emerson.
Essay on History.
[1004]. The law of gravitation is indisputably and incomparably the greatest scientific discovery ever made, whether we look at the advance which it involved, the extent of truth disclosed, or the fundamental and satisfactory nature of this truth.—Whewell, W.
History of the Inductive Sciences, Bk. 7, chap. 2, sect. 5.
[1005]. Newton’s theory is the circle of generalization which includes all the others [as Kepler’s laws, Ptolemy’s theory, etc.];—the highest point of the inductive ascent;—the catastrophe of the philosophic drama to which Plato had prologized;—the point to which men’s minds had been journeying for two thousand years.—Whewell, W.
History of the Inductive Sciences, Bk. 7, chap. 2, sect. 5.
[1006]. The efforts of the great philosopher [Newton] were always superhuman; the questions which he did not solve were incapable of solution in his time.—Arago.