Be this as it will, it is by the help of this geometry of infinites that Sir Isaac Newton attained to the most sublime discoveries.  I am now to speak of another work, which, though more adapted to the capacity of the human mind, does nevertheless display some marks of that creative genius with which Sir Isaac Newton was informed in all his researches.  The work I mean is a chronology of a new kind, for what province soever he undertook he was sure to change the ideas and opinions received by the rest of men.

Accustomed to unravel and disentangle chaos, he was resolved to convey at least some light into that of the fables of antiquity which are blended and confounded with history, and fix an uncertain chronology.  It is true that there is no family, city, or nation, but endeavours to remove its original as far backward as possible.  Besides, the first historians were the most negligent in setting down the eras:  books were infinitely less common than they are at this time, and, consequently, authors being not so obnoxious to censure, they therefore imposed upon the world with greater impunity; and, as it is evident that these have related a great number of fictitious particulars, it is probable enough that they also gave us several false eras.

It appeared in general to Sir Isaac that the world was five hundred years younger than chronologers declare it to be.  He grounds his opinion on the ordinary course of Nature, and on the observations which astronomers have made.

By the course of Nature we here understand the time that every generation of men lives upon the earth.  The Egyptians first employed this vague and uncertain method of calculating when they began to write the beginning of their history.  These computed three hundred and forty-one generations from Menes to Sethon; and, having no fixed era, they supposed three generations to consist of a hundred years.  In this manner they computed eleven thousand three hundred and forty years from Menes’s reign to that of Sethon.

The Greeks before they counted by Olympiads followed the method of the Egyptians, and even gave a little more extent to generations, making each to consist of forty years.

Now, here, both the Egyptians and the Greeks made an erroneous computation.  It is true, indeed, that, according to the usual course of Nature, three generations last about a hundred and twenty years; but three reigns are far from taking up so many.  It is very evident that mankind in general live longer than kings are found to reign, so that an author who should write a history in which there were no dates fixed, and should know that nine kings had reigned over a nation; such an historian would commit a great error should he allow three hundred years to these nine monarchs.  Every generation takes about thirty-six years; every reign is, one with the other, about twenty.  Thirty kings of England have swayed the sceptre from William the Conqueror to George I., the years of whose