Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
“I have received from Einstein himself a copy of his recent papers, and I shall always consider it an honour to have done so. But still I am at liberty to say that the theory does not impress me as holding the secret of the laws of nature. I feel much more disposed to trust the classical theory, modified perhaps so as to recognise the principle of equivalence. Einstein's theory is wonderful—wonderful in its complexity and in the mathematical difficulties overcome. Newton's is even more wonderful—wonderful in its simplicity and in its agreement with nearly all the experimental evidence of two and a half centuries. I cannot agree with those who would make nature more akin to the complex than to the simple.”