Few people outside the Royal Society know that Sir Isaac Newton, whose book, The Principia, changed science to its foundations, was not only one of England's greatest men of science but also one of her most ardent students of mysticism. There is a large mass, estimated at one million words, of unprinted papers which he left behind in a box at Cambridge--papers which must surely have been well known to his bewildered biographers but which have never been published out of fear of harming Newton's reputation by the mere revelation of this interest in a subject which was for so long taboo in scientific circles. After Newton's death Bishop Horsley inspected the box with a view to publication, but on seeing some of the contents he slammed the lid with horror. The existence of these papers is well known to, and has been testified by, Sir Robert Robinson, President of the Royal Society, who, asking how Newton could be both a mathematician and a mystic, himself answered that it was because he "perceived a mystery beyond and did his best to penetrate it." Also it is well known to the late Lord Keynes, the famous economist, who was moved by them to exclaim that Newton's "deepest instincts were occult," and that "the clue to his mind is to be found in his unusual powers of continuous concentrated introspection."
In a lecture given to a small private audience at the Royal Society Club in 1942, Lord Keynes said this about Newton: "Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. . . . He believed that these clues were to be found partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation in Babylonia. . . . All would be revealed to him if only he could persevere to the end, uninterrupted, by himself. . . . All his unpublished works on esoteric and theological matters are marked by careful learning and extreme sobriety of statement. They are just as sane as the Principia."
A large section of these papers seeks to deduce secret truths of the universe from apocalyptic writings; another examines the truth of Church traditions; a third deals with alchemy, the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and the transmutation of metals; a fourth consists of copies of ancient mystic manuscripts or translations of them.
There, in the University Library at Cambridge, about half of these silent memorials of Sir Isaac Newton's secret studies still rest today, while the other half were sold by auction and dispersed in private hands in 1936.
Newton's library had such titles in it as Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia, Fame and Confession of the Rosie Cross, Geber's The Philosopher's Stone, several of Raymond Lully's works, and four of Paracelsus'. His own personal annotations appear in most of the volumes. He studied Jacob Boehme very closely and copied long pieces from his works.
Even such a hard-headed scientist as Professor E.N. da C. Andrade was forced to confess, at the Tercentenary Celebrations in 1946, "I feel that Newton derived his knowledge by something more like direct contact with the unknown sources that surround us, with the world of mystery, than has been vouchsafed to any other man of science. A mixture of mysticism and natural science is not unexampled--Swedenborg has important achievements in geology, physiology and engineering to his credit."
Archbishop Tenison said to Newton: "You know more divinity than all of us put together."
-- Notebooks Category 7: The Intellect > Chapter 6 : Science > # 102
