Newton's Binomial Theorem 



the regulation which forced Latin and Greek 

 upon me before allowing me to open up rela- 

 tions with the sine and cosine. To-day, wiser, 

 ripened by age and experience, I am of a 

 different opinion. I very much regret that 

 my modest literary studies were not more 

 carefully conducted and further prolonged. 

 To fill up this enormous blank a little, I re- 

 spectfully returned, somewhat late in life, to 

 those good old books which are usually sold 

 second-hand with their leaves hardly cut. 

 Venerable pages, annotated in pencil during 

 the long evenings of my youth, I have found 

 you again and you are more than ever my 

 friends. You have taught me that an obliga- 

 tion rests upon whoso wields the pen : he 

 must hav^e something to say that is capable 

 of interesting us. When the subject comes 

 within the scope of natural science, the interest 

 is nearly always assured; the difficulty, the 

 great difficulty, is to prune it of its thorns and 

 to present it under a prepossessing aspect. 

 Truth, they say, rises naked from a well. 

 Agreed; but admit that she is all the better 

 for being decently clothed. She craves, if not 

 the gaudy furbelows borrowed from rhetoric's 

 wardrobe, at least a vine-leaf. The geometers 

 alone have the right to refuse her that modest 

 295 



