Page images
PDF
EPUB

larities in my plan, on which at that time I had not sufficiently meditated: and to aggravate these defects, some things of essential import were omitted, or scarcely mentioned. Some intelligent friends therefore urged me to correct what I had done, and to produce a work, that might gratify curiosity, and instruct the mind. These views I have endeavoured to accomplish, as far as my feeble means would permit; and I shall deem myself happy, if I can inspire youth with a taste for the study of those sublime sciences, which are truly worthy to employ a thinking being.

Perhaps I may be suspected of partiality in their favour; but I trust I shall find little difficulty in exculpating myself. I am firmly persuaded, as on several occasions I have declared, that men of superiour endowments are almost equally rare in every branch of knowledge; and that nature has established a kind of equilibrium between all her productions: as a consequence, therefore, of the same principle, I must contest the point with those who confine genius to the faculties of imagination; as I believe, that with a common understanding, and assiduous labour, any man may attain the first rank in the sciences. The examples, on which they rest their opinion, are

far

far from conclusive. It is true we have seen men of assiduity, possessed of good memories, and with moderate natural parts, acquire in the World the reputation of great geometricians. But is it in the least surprising, that the ignorant or superficial many should confound the fruits of that knowledge, which is acquired by study, with those new and original truths to which genius alone can give birth?' To be just, we must weigh the great mathematicians of well established reputation against the great poets, and the great orators. Thus on the one side let us place Homer, Virgil, Racine, Pope, Demosthenes, Cicero, Bossuet; on the other Archimedes, Hipparchus, Galileo, des Cartes, Huygens, Newton, and Leibnitz; and it will not then be so easily determined, to which side the balance ought to incline.

I shall likewise combat, or at least endeavour to weaken, a reproach made to mathematicians, to which it must be confessed some of the most illustrious have been liable, though perhaps it has been still more justly merited by their adversaries; that of being vain. Such, for example, was John Bernoulli, as appears in this work. But why should the World so rigidly require of superiour men, to appear entirely ignorant of their own worth? I have

a 2

I have sought for the reason, and I believe I have found it. Modesty is a desertion of ourselves, a kind of avowal of inferiority, at which mediocrity catches greedily as a source of consolation, which it endeavours to interpret in the literal sense, and which it frequently employs as a weapon to keep at a distance the timid man of genius, destitute of support, and the victim of his own candour. Experience shows, that there is more danger in humbling ourselves too much, than ridiculousness in proclaiming our own merits.

Let me add, that what is sometimes taken for self love is but the estimable ingenuousness of a man of letters, almost always a solitary in the midst of society, ignorant of the maxims and customs of a corrupt World, where men seek only to deceive each other, and to feign sentiments which they do not possess.

This history concludes with the fatal years of 1782 and 1783, in which the sciences were robbed of Daniel Bernoulli, Euler, and d'Alembert. I refrain at present from speaking of the labours of living mathematicians: but of these likewise I have made a sketch, which I shall publish under the title of Considerations on the present State of Mathematics. The reader is aware.how much circumspection such a

work must require, as it is my intention to be perfectly just, and to pay to every real inventor that tribute of praise and acknowledgement which is his due.

THE EDITOR takes the liberty of adding, by way of a note, that he can have no doubt but the projected work, here mentioned, by M. Bossut, would prove highly acceptable to Mathematicians; and that many of them will wish it may be speedily executed.

CON

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

186,

and

read were

situate

that

read and it was

read and

where

put a comma after heavens

5 f. b. after arithmetic instead of a semicolon put a comma

4 f. b. dele

[blocks in formation]

for also

[blocks in formation]

read while
situate

[blocks in formation]

72

489,

504,

506,

9

36

after instrument instead of a semicolon put a comma

dele the comma after time

for

read situate

t.

traverse through read traverse

have

has

dele viz.; and after &c. instead of a semicolon put

[blocks in formation]

dele in

read bore

« PreviousContinue »