e university the
Newtonian principles of astronomy, instead of the Cartesian hypothesis
of vortices. As is well known, Cartesianism had for various reasons
taken a far deeper root in France than it ever did here, and held its
place a good generation after Newtonian ideas were accepted and taught
at Oxford and Cambridge.[8] Voltaire's translation of the _Principia_,
which he was prevented by the Cartesian chancellor, D'Aguesseau, from
publishing until 1738, overthrew the reigning system, and gave a strong
impulse to scientific inquiry.

[Footnote 8: Whewell's _Hist. Induct. Sciences_, ii. 147-159.]

Turgot mastered the new doctrine with avidity. In the acute letter of
criticism which, while still at the Sorbonne, he addressed to Buffon, he
pointedly urged it as the first objection to that writer's theory of the
formation and movements of the planets, that any attempt at fundamental
explanations of this kind was a departure from 'the simplicity and safe
reserve of the philosophy of Newton.'[9] He only, however, made a
certain advance in mathematics. He appears to have had no peculiar or
natural aptitude for this study; though he is said to have constantly
blamed himself for not having gone more deeply into it. It is hardly to
be denied that mathematical genius and philosophic genius do not always
go together. The precision, definiteness, and accurate limitations of
the method of the one, are usually unfriendly to the brooding,
tentative, uncircumscribed meditation which is the productive humour in
the other. Turgot was essentially of the philosophising temper. Though
the activity of his intelligence was incessant, his manner of work was
the reverse of quick. 'When he applied to work,' says Morellet, 'when it
was a question of writing or doing, he was slow and loitering. Slow,
because he insisted on finishing all he did perfectly, according to his
own conception of perfection, which was most difficult of attainment,
even down to the minutest detail; and because he would not receive
assistance, being never contented with what he had not done himself. He
also loitered a great deal, losing time in arranging his desk and
cutting his pens, not that he was not thinking profoundly through all
this trifling; but mere thinking did not advance his work.'[10] We may
admit, perhaps, that the work was all the better for the thinking that
preceded it, and that the time which Turgot seemed to waste in cutting
his pens and setting his ta