From: Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net>
Newsgroups: sci.space.history,soc.history.moderated,soc.history.property
Subject: Re: Newton's quotation - Please help me!
Date: 25 Feb 1999 17:10:57 GMT

In article <36d74cfe.2013607@news.remarq.com>,  <e.capra@agonet.it> wrote:
>From which of Isaac Newton's books has the following quotation been taken?
>
>"I do not know how I am judged by the world: it seems to me that I am a
>child who is playing on the beach by the
>sea and cheers up if sometimes he finds a pebble smoother than the others
>or a shell more beautiful than the others, while the vast ocean of the
>Truth stays inexplored before him".

Bartlett's (14th ed.) credits it to Brewster, "Memoirs of Newton" [1855],
vol. II, ch. 27.  Which would indicate, I think, that it appeared in a
letter or in unpublished papers, not in one of Newton's books.

(The version which appears in Bartlett's is worded slightly differently,
but the original may well be in Latin.)
--
The good old days                   |  Henry Spencer   henry@spsystems.net
weren't.                            |      (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)