ABSTRACT

During the eighteenth century there was a greater awareness of Newton’s natural theology in his native Britain than in France, and several of Newton’s earliest British supporters drew attention to the brief excursions into natural theology found in the Queries to the Opticks and the General Scholium to the Principia. Nevertheless, little was known of Newton’s personal religious faith. British poet and artist William Blake came to see Newton as epitomizing cold, soulless reason. In Blake’s 1795 painting of Newton, the scientist gazes down on a geometrical figure of the earth, not up to the dwelling place of God in heaven. If Blake had known Newton’s private thoughts rather than the public image, he likely would have found more of a kindred spirit than the object of animus and scorn.