"The Spirit"
The General Scholium ends with a mystifying paragraph about a "certain most subtle Spirit, which prevades and lies hid in all gross bodies." It has been largely interpreted as Newton's view and prospect of electricity, a phenomenon of which little was known about at the time. Newton describes some attributes of this Spirit and concludes:
But these are things that cannot be explained in a few words, nor are we furnished with that sufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate determination and demonstration of the laws which this electric spirit operates.
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Famous quotes containing the word spirit:
“When the spirit brings light into our minds, it dispels darkness. We see it, as we do that of the sun at noon, and need not the twilight of reason to show it us. This light from heaven is strong, clear, and pure carries its own demonstration with it; and we may as naturally take a glow-worm to assist us to discover the sun, as to examine the celestial ray by our dim candle, reason.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)