I should like to thank Dr George Molland and Dr Hans Gottshalk for advice on points of transcription and translation.

¹ See Hoskin, M. A. ‘Newton, providence and the universe of stars’, Journal of the history of astronomy, 1977, 8, 77–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² Ibid., pp. 77–90.

³ Ibid., pp. 81–90. There are two lengthy successive drafts in Add. 3965. 12, 280^v–279^r, in Add. 3965.6, 75^r/74^v. and in Add. 3965. 12, 275^v–276^r, and 184^r–185^r.

⁴ Ibid. For Theorem XIV, see Isaac Newton's philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, Facsimile of 3rd edn. (1726) (ed. by Koyré, A. and Cohen, I. B.), 2 vols., Cambridge, 1972, ii, 590.Google Scholar

⁵ Unpublished scientific papers of Isaac Newton (ed. by Hall, A. R. and Hall, M. B.), Cambridge, 1962, pp. 374–7 and 378–85.Google Scholar MS. Add 4005, folios 21–2 (entitled ‘Cosmography. Chap. I. of the Sun & fixt Starrs’), and MS. Add. 4005, folios 45–9 (entitled ‘Phaenomena’).

⁶ Newton first wrote ‘Durantium substania’.

⁷ All the material in {} brackets (folio 545^v) constitutes a restoration. I am indebted to Dr D. T. Whiteside for his considerable help in this regard, as indeed for his advice in general. In a preliminary draft (folio 541^r) Newton wrote ‘Aeternitas tamen & infinitas per se perfectiones non sunt sed perfectiones alias tantum complent. Quonian vita, sapientia, potentia, misericordia, justicia, clementia, bonitas perfectiones sunt; hae per aeternitate et Infinitatem evadunt perfectissimae. At stultitia, crudelitas, injusticia per aeternitatem & infinitatem redduntur pessima’. (‘Yet eternity and infinity are not perfections per se, but merely complete other perfections. Since life, wisdom, power, mercy, justice, clemency, goodness, are perfections, these by virtue of eternity and infinity attain to supreme perfection. But folly, cruelty, injustice by means of eternity and infinity are rendered most evil’). The similarities with a passage in De gravitatione are striking. There Newton wrote ‘…for infinity is not perfection except when it is an attribute of perfect things. Infinity of intellect, power, happiness and so forth is the height of perfection; but infinity of ignorance, impotence, wretchedness and so on is the height of imperfection; and infinity of extension is so far perfect as that which is extended’. Op. cit. (5), pp. 135–6.

⁸ Newton first put the Greek in the nominative case. He cancelled this and inflected the phrase in the genitive to agree with ‘Jehovae’.

⁹ Newton mis-spells the Hebrew. He also does so in two of the drafts on space and time written for Desmaiseaux. See Koyré, A. and Cohen, I. B., ‘Newton and the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence’, Archives Internationales d'histoire des sciences, 1962, 15, 63–126 (99, 101)Google Scholar. In each case he writes Newton has the wrong middle letter. The word is generally used by religious Jews to avoid desecrating the name of God.

¹⁰ The remaining transcription is from Add. 3965. 13, folios 541^v–542^r. They constitute a natural supplement to folios 546. Indeed, they represent Newton's first attempt to formulate these ideas.

¹¹ Ibid. The remainder is a translation of the transcription from folios 541^v–542^r. Apart from transcriptions in Note 7 and Note 32, I have not included any other passages from these folios, as they are not significantly variant.

¹² Op. cit. (4), 46–8.Google Scholar

¹³ For discussion of the uses of the distinction in medieval thought see Shapiro, Herman, Motion, time and place according to William Ockham, St Bonaventure, NY, 1957, chapter III, pp. 36–83Google Scholar; Wallace, William A., Causality and scientific explanation, 2 vols., Ann Arbor, 1972–1974, i, pp. 56–7Google Scholar; and Murdoch, John and Sylla, Edith, ‘Walter Burley’, in Gillispie, C. C. (ed.), Dictionary of scientific biography, New York, 1970, ii, 610.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Op. cit. (4), i, 47–8.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Op. cit. (5), pp. 89–121.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 90–103.

¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 100–13.

¹⁸ In De gravitatione Newton holds that absolute space in fact contains an infinite number of actual places whether or not there is any matter present. Ibid., 100–1. In the Principia, however, Newton can be read as saying that there are no places which are really distinct from absolute space.

¹⁹ Op. cit. (5), p. 95.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., p. 103.

²¹ Ibid., pp. 103–4.

²² Ibid., pp. 102–3.

²³ Ibid., p. 102.

²⁴ Cambridge University Library. Add. MS3996, folio 87^r. The entry is entitled ‘Of Quantity’. Newton writes, ‘If Extension is indefinite onely in greatness & not infinite yⁿ a point is but indefinitely little & yet we cannot comprehend anything lesse. To say y^e extension is but indefinite (I meane all y^e extension w^ch exists & not so much onely as we can fancy) because we cannot perceive its limits, is as much to say God is but indefinitely perfect because wee cannot apprehend his whole perfection’. Newton's discussion in De gravitatione of the claim that extended space is truly infinite, is basically a development of this entry. See Op. cit. (5), pp. 102–3.Google Scholar

²⁵ Op. cit. (5), p. 101.Google Scholar

²⁶ Op. cit. (4), i, 73–85.Google Scholar See especially the important scholium to the lemmas, pp. 86–8.

²⁷ Op. cit. (5), p. 101.Google Scholar I do not wish to imply that in general Newton's mathematical thinking developed little from the time of De gravitatione to the post-Principia period. It most decidedly did, as D. T. Whiteside's seven splendid volumes testify.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 104.

²⁹ Op. cit. (4), ii, 759–65.Google Scholar

³⁰ Op. cit. (5), p. 359.Google Scholar

³¹ Op. cit. (8), p. 101.Google Scholar

³² This he makes clear in a minor variant of section 7 of the manuscript, folio 542^r ‘Substantia una, viva, intelligens, volens, semper immutabiliter, & ubique necessario existens, durans permanens, quae in partes discindi non potest, quae tota intelligit quicquid in singulis ejus locis agitur, quae vim suam totam in locis singulis exerere potest…’ (‘A substance that is one, living, intelligent, willing, always immutably & everywhere necessarily existing, enduring and permanent, which cannot be divided into parts, and which understands as a whole whatsoever is being done in each of its places, which is able to exert its whole power in each of its single places…’).

³³ Op. cit. (4), ii, 763.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ibid., p. 764.

³⁵ Newton, I., Opticks, 4th edn., London, 1730Google Scholar; reprinted New York, 1952, p. 370, Query 28.