INTRODUCTION. XXV 



parts of the First as &quot; he should have a desire to 

 know, or the whole, in order, if he should think 

 fit.&quot; Newton also requires in his correspondent a 

 much more moderate provision of geometrical and 

 algebraical knowledge than another mathematician 

 laid down as requisite, to whom application had 

 been made for advice, and who gave Dr. Bentley 

 so formidable a list of books as necessary to be read, 

 that he at once appealed to Sir Isaac Newton him 

 self, who prescribed three or four instead of above 

 thirty. (Vol. i. p. 464.) 



If it has been made manifest that a very limited 

 acquaintance with mathematics may suffice for 

 attaining a competent notion of the general scope of 

 Newton s discoveries and of the great work which 

 revealed them to the world, it is no less certain that 

 the knowledge thus acquired must be superficial, 

 except as regards the fundamental doctrine of gra 

 vitation, the foundation of the system ; and that 

 in order well to understand the dynamical researches 

 which have exercised so mighty an influence upon 

 the whole of Natural Science, a much more full 

 and minute study of the Principia is required. It 

 is to be hoped, therefore, that readers of the two 

 classes referred to, those of the second especially, 

 may be encouraged to pass into the third, for whose 

 use this Analytical View is designed; may make 



