MINING ALL WITHIN 219 



mathematicians." " Ellfs accordingly suggested to Clarke that 

 he should prepare a new Latin translation of the Traite.^ 



This invitation put Clarke in something of a dilemma: for 

 on the one hand he knew, as Ellis did not, that Newton's 

 Principia had not only made serious inroads into the Cartesian 

 position, but had in practice developed a rival cosmology; yet, 

 on the other hand, neither Newton's lectures nor his book had 

 had much impact on the university, and an improved Car- 

 tesian textbook was an urgent necessity. If Whiston's memory 

 for dates is accurate, Clarke's doubts must have persisted into 

 1697, the very year in which his translation appeared, for it 

 was then that he introduced himself to Whiston in a Norwich 

 coffee-house " to ask my opinion about the fitness of such a 

 translation. I well remember the answer I made him, that 

 ' since the youth of the university must have, at present, some 

 System of Natural Philosophy for their studies and exercises; 

 and since the true system of Sir Isaac Newton's was not yet 

 made easy enough for the purpose, it is not improper, for their 

 sakes, yet to translate and use the system of Rohault . . . but 

 that as soon as Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy came to be 

 better known, that only ought to be taught, and the other 

 dropped.' " ^ Newton stood in far greater need of an inter- 

 preter than Descartes; until one was forthcoming, Rohault must 

 be taught. 



In the Preface to his 1697 edition, Clarke explains his 

 motives. The existing translation is faulty, and he gives 

 examples of this. But in addition, he says, he is not a man 

 to make an oracle of his author, and although critics have 

 failed to discredit many of the things in the book, some parts 

 have been overthrown by subsequent experiments and some 

 have been emended by later writers. He has therefore supplied 

 some short notes, in which he has tried to give " a full answer 

 to such objections made against the author as seem not to 



■^ W. Whiston, Historical Memoirs of the Lije of Dr. Samuel Clarke (London, 

 1730), p. 6. 

 ^ Ibid., p. 5. 

 ^ Ibid., pp. 5-6. 



