 In this passage, Hume singles out Newton as the “greatest genius” (no mention of Galileo this time). Hume is following Fontenelle’s interpretation of Newton as a modest genius not concerned with acquiring fame (Fontenelle 1728—see  Other Internet Resources  below). But again, Hume’s praise is not entirely straightforward. It turns out that part of Newton’s achievement is due to his failure to possess two kinds of self-knowledge: Newton did not understand how much smarter he was than others and Newton did not understand how far removed from ordinary people’s concerns his theories were. Hume implies that if Newton had been more self-aware and more attuned to the environment in which he was writing, he would have been more likely to adjust his mode of reasoning to public prejudice. On Hume’s account Newton did not properly understand his relationship to his readership and, paradoxically, this partly accounts for Newton’s success. It seems not to have occurred to Hume that Newton’s mode of presentation in the Principia was a deliberate one to avoid controversy with those who could not follow its intricate geometric arguments—an intention Newton makes explicit in the introduction to Book 3 of the Principia.