annihilate every physical obstacle

 

gravity, Newton, in order to render possible the action of attraction in space, had, so to speak, to annihilate every physical obstacle capable of impeding its free action; ether among others, though he had more than a presentiment of its existence. Advocating the corpuscular theory, he made an absolute vacuum between the heavenly bodies. . . . Whatever may have been his suspicions and inner convictions about Ether

When read in a fair and unprejudiced spirit, Sir Isaac Newton's works are an ever ready witness to show how he must have hesitated between gravitation and attraction, impulse and some other unknown cause to explain the regular course of the planetary motion. How modern Science abused the privilege of building its newest theories upon the law of gravitation, may be realised when one remembers how profoundly religious was that great man.