as a philologist, was, in 1692, nominated first "Boyle lecturer." In the series of lectures which he accordingly gave," he tried to present the Newtonian physics in a popular form, and to show that it proved the existence of an intelligent Creator. Indeed, it seems true that, as Rosenberger28 has remarked, England was then the best soil for the growth of the mystical idea of an elementary force directly implanted in matter by God. France and, in part, Germany had adopted the rationalistic philosophy of Descartes, in which all occult forces were banished. Toward the end of the year 1692, Bentley by letter consulted Newton himself, and this was the occasion for the four celebrated replies of Newton, dating from December 10, 1692, to February 25, 1693.29

The first of Newton's letters begins: "When I wrote my treatise about our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for a belief in a Deity; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose. But if I have done the public any service this way, it is due to nothing but industry and patient thought." The way in which the solar system is constructed is not, in Newton's opinion, "explicable by mere natural causes," but must be ascribed "to the counsel and countenance of a voluntary Agent." Again: "The same power, whether natural or supernatural, which placed the sun in the center of the six primary planets, placed Saturn in the center of the orbs of his five secondary planets;....and therefore, had this cause been a blind one, without contrivance or design, the sun would have been a body....without light or heat. Why there is one

""A confutation of Atheism," The Works of Richard Bentley (ed. Alexander Dyce), London, 1836, Vol. III. Cf. Brewster, op. cit., 1855, Vol. II, pp. 124-125; Rosenberger, op. cit., pp. 263-265.

"Horsley, Vol. IV, pp. 429-442; cf. Rosenberger, op. cit., pp. 265-271. In Brewster's account (op. cit., pp. 125-130) nearly all the points which interest us here are omitted.

body in our system qualified to give light and heat to all the rest, I know no reason but because the author of the system thought it convenient; and why there is but one body of this kind, I know no reason but because one was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the rest..." Further, that cause shows itself to be "very well skilled in mechanics and geometry."

Nearly at the end of the second letter, dated January 17, 1693, Newton3° remarked: "You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me; for the cause of gravity I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more time to consider of it." In the fourth letter, he31 said: "It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other without mutual contact; as it must do if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers."

It may be remarked that, as Newton happened to mention, the words: "It is inconceivable.... inherent in it" are very nearly Bentley's own.32 Bentley wrote:

" and

has re

should (without a divine impression) operate.... omitted the phrase: "in the sense of Epicurus." On this opinion of Newton's, Rosenberger marked that a consideration of the context shows that there is only an appearance on Newton's part of a tendency toward a kinetic hypothesis of gravitation; for he added the words "or immaterial," and showed, by his continual emphasis on the necessity there is for an intelligent creator and director of the system of the world, that he, for his part, held that the agent in question was immaterial. Bentley understood Newton's words in this way, and in his lectures laid down without any reserve the proposition that natural actions are brought about by an immaterial agency.34

Newton's fourth and last letter was dated by Horsley February 11, 1693, while the third was dated February 25, 1693. Brewster3 gave February II as the date of the third letter, and February 25 as the date of the fourth letter; but what Brewster called (correctly) the third was printed by Horsley as the fourth, and vice versa.36 The only letter of Bentley's on this subject which Brewster found among the Portsmouth Papers, was dated February 19, 1693, and obviously Newton's letter of February 25 is a reply to this. Bentley's long letter was printed by Brewster, and in it gave at some length his own version of Newton's opinions, stated so that Newton might signify his approval or dissent.

37

It must be remembered that the introduction of a material medium to serve as a vehicle for the actions between bodies is one of the points of Descartes's philosophy, which

"Op. cit., pp. 268-269.

"Cf. also Whiston's deductions from Bentley's seventh sermon mentioned on page 271 (ibid.).

"Op. cit., 1855, Vol. II, p. 128.

"The numbering was correctly given in Rosenberger's book.

"Op. cit., pp. 463-470.

aimed—although the aim was naturally not stated by Descartes at a time when the church was powerful and given to persecution at the description of the system of nature in rational terms alone, and thus without assuming any intervention of the Deity. Such a scheme would not appeal to the pious Newton, especially as he saw, and expressed in 1687, as we have seen, that an all-pervading fluid of great density—as would seem to be a consequence of its necessary continuity-would offer great difficulties to motion. Indeed, Parmenides, who, in the sixth century before Christ, evolved a primitive cosmology of the same type as that of Descartes, was obliged to put motion in the rank of illusions.38 As might be expected, common sense nearly always dominated logical ideals in men's minds, and the opposition between logical ideals and common sense was slurred over from the time of Zeno till nearly the twentieth century of our era.

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND.

PHILIP E. B. JOURDAIN.

"Cf. G. Milhaud, Leçons sur les origines de la science grecque, Paris, 1893, pp. 208-209; J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 2d ed., London, 1908, pp. 203-208.

ON THE MEANING OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.1

SOCIA

OCIAL psychology in its widest sense applies to the social behavior of all animals, but more specifically, and as the term is usually employed, to the social behavior of members of the human race, both individually and collectively.

Behavior is used here in the sense in which it appears in the literature of general psychology, to point to an adjustment on the part of an organism to its environment. But not all adjustments are social, and social behavior implies those interactions or adjustments that occur among men and women and children. They may or may not be accompanied by a social consciousness. It is assumed that the interactions in question were conscious at least in their origins, excepting in cases in which they may have arisen by accident and have been discovered and made use of consciously at a later time; as for example when one discovers that one has already unwittingly adopted a mode of address which elicits favorable response from a neighbor, and therefore deliberately continues to exercise this manner of address, until it once more becomes unconscious. Social behavior, therefore, includes those automatic or relatively automatic adjustments among men-social habits—as well as conscious adjustments. Social psychology, then, is charged with accounting for the development of these so

'The author, Mr. Robert H. Gault, is associate professor of psychology at Northwestern University and managing editor of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.