The first publication of the preceding statement produced a strong sensation among the friends and admirers of Newton. They could not easily believe in the prostration of that intellectual strength which had unbarred the strongholds of the universe. The unbroken equanimity of Newton’s mind, the purity of his moral character, his temperate and abstemious life, his ardent and unaffected piety, and the weakness of his imaginative powers, all indicated a mind which was not likely to be overset by any affliction to which it could be exposed. The loss of a few experimental records could never have disturbed the equilibrium of a mind like his. If they were the records of discoveries, the discoveries themselves indestructible would have been afterward given to the world. If they were merely the details of experimental results, a little time could have easily reproduced them. Had these records contained the first fruits of early genius—of obscure talent, on which fame had not yet shed its rays, we might have supposed that the first blight of such early ambition would have unsettled the stability of an untried mind. But Newton was satiated with fame. His mightiest discoveries were completed and diffused over all Europe, and he must have felt himself placed on the loftiest pinnacle of earthly ambition. The incredulity which such views could not fail to encourage was increased by the novelty of the information. No English biographer had ever alluded to such an event. History and tradition were equally silent, and it was not easy to believe that the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a member of the English parliament, and the first philosopher in Europe could have lost his reason without the dreadful fact being known to his own countrymen.