WATERHOUSE:Now who is the God of Secrets?

APTHORP:You are, for you still have not told me why you are here.

WATERHOUSE:As Lord of the Underworld, I customarily sit enthroned in the Well of Souls, where departed spirits whirl about me like so many dry leaves. Arising this morning at my lodgings in Gresham’s College and strolling down Bishopsgate, I chanced to look in ‘tween the columns of the ‘Change here. It was deserted. But a wind-vortex was picking up all the little scraps of paper dropped by traders yesterday and making ’em orbit round past all of the bancas like so many dry leaves… I became confused, thinking I had reached Hell, and took my accustomed seat.

APTHORP:Your discourse is annoying.

RAVENSCAR:“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties!”

WATERHOUSE:God save the King, m’lord.

APTHORP:God save the King-and damn all riddlers-m’lord.

WATERHOUSE:‘Twere redundant to damn Pluto.

RAVENSCAR:He’s damning me, Daniel, for prating about vortices.

APTHORP:The mystery is resolved. For now I perceive that the two of you have arranged to meet here. And since you are speaking of vortices, m’lord, I ween it has to do with Natural Philosophy.

RAVENSCAR:I beg leave to disagree, Sir Richard. For ’twas this fellow in the chair who chose the place of our meeting. Normally we meet in the Golden Grasshopper.

APTHORP:So the mystery endures. Why the ‘Change today, then, Daniel?

WATERHOUSE:You will see soon enough.

RAVENSCAR:Perhaps it is because we are going to exchange some documents. Voila!

APTHORP:What is that you have whipped out of your pocket m’lord, I do not have my spectacles.

RAVENSCAR:The latest from Hanover. Dr. Leibniz has favored you, Daniel, with a personalized and autographed copy of the latest Acta Eruditorum. Lots of mathematickal incantations are in here, chopped up with great stretched-out S marks-extraordinary!

WATERHOUSE:Then the Doctor has finally dropped the other shoe, for that could only be the Integral Calculus.

RAVENSCAR:Too, some letters addressed to you personally, Daniel, which means they’ve only been read by a few dozen people so far.

WATERHOUSE:By your leave.

APTHORP:Good heavens, m’lord, if Mr. Waterhouse had snatched ’em any quicker they’d’ve caught fire. One who dwells in the Underworld ought to be more cautious when handling Inflammable Objects.

WATERHOUSE:Here, m’lord, fresh from Cambridge, as promised, I give you Books I and II of Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton-have a care, some would consider it a valuable document.

APTHORP:My word, is that the cornerstone of a building, or a manuscript?

RAVENSCAR:Err! To judge by weight, it is the former.

APTHORP:Whatever it is, it is too long, too long!

WATERHOUSE:It explains the System of the World.

APTHORP:Some sharp editor needs to step in and take that wretch in hand!

RAVENSCAR:Will you just look at all of these damned illustrations… do you realize what this will cost, for all of the woodcuts?

WATERHOUSE:Think of each one of them as saving a thousand pages of tedious explanations full of great stretched-out S marks.

RAVENSCAR:None the less, the cost of printing this is going to bankrupt the Royal Society!

APTHORP:So that is why Mr. Waterhouse is seated at a chair, with no banca -it is a symbolic posture, meant to express the financial condition of the Royal Society. I very much fear that I am to be asked for money at this point. Say, can either one of you hear a word I am saying?

APTHORP:Go ahead and read. I don’t mind being ignored. Are those documents terribly fascinating, then?

APTHORP:Ah, like a salmon weaving a devious course up-torrent, slipping round boulders and leaping o’er logs, my assistant is making his way back to me.

MINION:You were right concerning the Jew, Sir Richard. He wants to purchase certain commodities in large amounts.

APTHORP:At this moment on a Board in Amsterdam, those commodities must be fetching a higher price than is scribbled on our humble English Plank. The Jew wants to buy low here, and sell high there. Pray tell, what sorts of commodities are in such high demand in Amsterdam?

MINION:He takes a particular interest in certain coarse, durable fabrics…

APTHORP:Sailcloth! Someone is building a navy!

MINION:He specifically does not want sailcloth, but cheaper stuff.

APTHORP:Tent cloth! Someone is building an army! Come, let us go and buy all the war-stuff we can find.

RAVENSCAR:So this is the thing Newton’s been working on?

WATERHOUSE:How could he have produced that without working on it?

RAVENSCAR:When I work on things, Daniel, they come out in disjoint parts, a lump at a time; this is a unitary whole, like the garment of Our Saviour, seamless… what is he going to do in Book III? Raise the dead and ascend into Heaven?

WATERHOUSE:He is going to solve the orbit of the moon, provided Flamsteed will part with the requisite data.

RAVENSCAR:If Flamsteed doesn’t, I’ll see to it he parts with his fingernails. God! Here’s a catchy bit: “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction… if you press a stone with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone.” The perfection of this work is obvious even to me, Daniel! How must it look to you?

WATERHOUSE:If you are going down that road, then ask rather how it looks to Leibniz, for he is as far beyond me as I am beyond you; if Newton is the finger, Leibniz is the stone, and they press against each other with equal and opposite force, a little bit harder every day.

RAVENSCAR:But Leibniz has not read it, and you have, so there would be little point in asking him.

WATERHOUSE:I have taken the liberty of conveying the essentials to Leibniz, which explains why he is writing so many of these damned letters.

RAVENSCAR:But certainly Leibniz would not dare to challenge a work of such radiance!

WATERHOUSE:Leibniz is at the disadvantage of not having seen it. Or perhaps we should count this as an advantage, for anyone who sees it is dumbfounded by the brilliance of the geometry, and it is difficult to criticize a man’s work when you are down on your knees shielding your eyes.

RAVENSCAR:You believe that Leibniz has discovered an error in one of these proofs?

WATERHOUSE:No, proofs such as Newton’s cannot have errors.

RAVENSCAR:Cannot?

WATERHOUSE:As a man looks at an apple on a table and says, “There is an apple on the table,” you may look at these geometrical diagrams of Newton’s and say, “Newton speaks the truth.”

RAVENSCAR:Then I’ll convey a copy to the Doctor forthwith, so that he may join us on his knees.

WATERHOUSE:Don’t bother. Leibniz’s objection lies not in what Newton has done but in what he has not done.

RAVENSCAR:Perhaps we can get Newton to do it in Book III, then, and remove the objection! You have influence with him…

WATERHOUSE:The ability to annoy Isaac is not to be confused with influence.

RAVENSCAR:We will convey Leibniz’s objections to him directly, then.

WATERHOUSE:You do not grasp the nature of Leibniz’s objections. It is not that Newton left some corollary unproved, or failed to follow up on some promising line of inquiry. Turn back, even before the Laws of Motion, and read what Isaac says in his introduction. I can quote it from memory: “For I here design only to give a mathematical notion of these forces, without considering their physical causes and seats.”