SIMPSON 



SIN 



469 



Simpson, THOMAS, one of the most eminent 

 of the numerous non-academic mathematicians of 

 England, was horn on the 20th August 1710, at 

 Market Boswortli in Leicestershire. His father 

 was a stuff-weaver, ami, intending his son to 

 follow the same occupation, gave him little or no 

 education. The son, however, had a taste for 

 tudy, and embraced every opportunity for gratify- 

 ing it. In consequence he quarrelled with his father 

 and went to Nuneaton. Here he worked at his 

 trade, and eked out his earnings by teaching an 

 evening school and by casting nativities. The last 

 occupation threatening to get him into difficulties, 

 he removed to Derby, where he remained from 1733 

 to 1735 or 1736. Thence he went to London, and 

 began teaching mathematics. In 1737 he pub- 

 lished a Treatise of Fluxions ; in 1740 a Treatise 

 on the Nature and Laws of Chance, and a volume 

 of Essays on Several Subjects in Speculative and 

 Mixed Mathematics; in 1742 the Doctrine of 

 Annuities and Reversions; in 1743 Mathematical 

 Dissertations on Physical and Analytical Subjects; 

 in 1745 a Treatise of Algebra; in 1747 Elements 

 of Geometry; in 1748 Trigonometry Plane and 

 Spherical; in 1750 the Doctrine and Appli- 

 cation of Fluxions; in 1752 Select Exercises for 

 Young Proficients in the Mathematics; and in 

 1757 Miscellaneous Tracts. He was a frequent 

 contributor to the Ladies' Diary, of which he 

 was the editor from 1754 to 1760. In 1743 he 

 was appointed professor of Mathematics in the 

 Royal Academy at Woolwich, and in 1745 he was 

 admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society. He died 

 on the 14th May 1761. A biographical notice 

 by Dr Charles Hutton, giving some curious 

 details of Simpson's life, is prefixed to Davis" 

 edition (1805) of the Doctrine and Application of 

 Fluxions. 



Simrook, KARL JOSEPH, a German poet and 

 scholar, whose name is indissoluhly associated with 

 the revival of interest in old German literature, 

 was born at Bonn, 28th August 1802. He studied 

 at the university of his native city and at Berlin, 

 and in 1826 entered the Prussian state service. 

 His first work was a translation into modem 

 German of the Nibelungenlied (1827; 50th ed. 

 1890). Soon after the publication of his transla- 

 tion of Hartmann von der Aue's Armer Heinrich 

 (1830) he was compelled to leave the Prussian 

 service on account of a revolutionary poem which 

 he had written. Afterwards he devoted him- 

 self exclusively to literature, and more partic- 

 ularly to the early literature of his own country, 

 which he has modernised in excellent style e.g. 

 the poems of Walter von der Yogelweide (1833), 

 Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parziral( 1842), Reineke 

 Fuchs ( 1845 ), Die Edda ( 1851 ), Gottfried von Stras- 

 burg's Tristan und Isolde (1855), the Heliand 

 (1856), Beowulf (1859), Der Wartburqkrieg ( 1858 ), 

 Brant's Narrenschiff (1872), &c. Besides these 

 editorial lalxnirs he translated Shakespeare's poems 

 and some of his plays, and published Quellen des 

 Shakspeare in Novellen, Marchen, und Sagen (3 

 vols. 1831 ), in conjunction with Echtermeyer and 

 Henschel ; Novellenschatz der Italiener (1832); 

 Rheinsagen aus dem Munde des Volkes und 

 Deutscher Dichter (1836); a collection of German 

 Volksbucher ( 13 vols. 1844-fi7), comprising national 

 proverbs, songs, and riddles, besides a vast quantity 

 of stories ; Das Heldenbuch, partly translations and 

 partly original poems (6 vols. 1843-49) illustrative 

 of the heroic traditions of the Teutonic race ; his 

 own Gedichte (1844); and a considerable number 

 of hamlliooks. In 1850 he was appointed professor 

 of Old German Language and Literature at Bonn, 

 a post which he held till his death, on 18th July 

 1876. See a monograph on him by Hocker ( Leip. 

 1877). 



Sims* GEORGE ROBERT, born in London, 2d 

 September 1847, joined the staff of Fun in 1874, in 

 18/7 commenced his 'Dagonet' contributions to 

 the Referee, and also contributed series of papers to 

 the Weekly Dispatcli. Among his plays are Crutch 

 and Toothpick (1879), Mother-in-law (1881), The 

 Lights o' London (1881), The Romany Rye (1882), 

 and, among others written in collaboration, In the 

 Ranks ( 1883), Harbour Lights ( 1885), The Golden 

 Ladder (1887), and The Grey Mare (1892). His 

 novels include Rogues and Vagabonds, Memoirs of 

 Mary Jane, Mary Jane Married, Dramas of Life, 

 Memoirs of a Mother-in-law, &c. ; and his letters 

 to the Daily News on the housing of the London 

 poor also deserve mention. 



Simson, ROBERT, was born in Ayrshire on the 

 14th October 1687. He was educated at the uni- 

 versity of Glasgow with a view to entrance into 

 the church, but, finding theology uncongenial, he 

 devoted himself to mathematics, and specially to 

 geometry. In 1711 he was appointed professor of 

 Mathematics in Glasgow, and he occupied this chair 

 for the long period of half a century. One of the 

 first subjects to which he turned his attention was 

 the restoration of Euclid's lost treatise on Porisms. 

 This had been previously attempted, but without 

 success, owing to Pappus' meagre and obscure 

 description of what a porism was. It is Simson'a 

 greatest achievement that he elucidated the nature 

 of the ancient porisms, though his restoration of 

 them is not complete. A specimen of his dis- 

 covery was printed in the Philosophical Transac- 

 tions of the Royal Society of London in 1723, but 

 his treatise on the subject did not appear till after 

 his death. His Sectiones Conical, in five books, 

 was published in 1735 ; the first three books were 

 afterwards translated into English, and have been 

 repeatedly printed. His restoration of Apollonius' 

 Plant Loci had been finished about 1738, but was 

 not published till 1749. The work by which he 

 is best known is his Elements of Euclid, which 

 appeared both in Latin and English in 1756. It 

 contained the first six books, the eleventh and 

 twelfth, and was the basis of nearly all the editions 

 published for more than 100 years afterwards. 

 In 1761 he resigned his professorship, and occu- 

 pied himself till his death, which took place on 

 the 1st October 1768, in the arrangement and 

 correction of his mathematical papers. His only 

 publication after his retirement was a second 

 edition of the Elements (1762), to which he an- 

 nexed the book of Data. In 1776 a large volume, 

 Roberti Simson Opera quiedam Reliqua, was 

 printed at the expense of Earl Stanhope, one 

 of Shimon's intimate friends, and liberally dis- 

 tributed. It contains a restoration of Apollonius' 

 two books De Sectione Determinata, with the 

 addition of other two De Porismatibus, and two 

 tracts on logarithms and the limits of quantities and 

 ratios. See Memoir by the Rev. W. Trail ( 1812). 



Sin is not simply moral evil as recognised by the 

 awakened human conscience, but guilt before God 

 or the gods. Some doctrine of sin, and of the 

 mode ofaverting the anger of the deity, of recon- 

 ciling him, and of escaping from the guilt, is 

 accordingly part of most religions, ancient and 

 modern. Zoroastrianism is a conflict of sin and 

 holiness. The central doctrine of Buddhism turns 

 on the demerit of human actions and human life, 

 which must be purged by transmigration. But in 

 no sacred books is the sense of sin so keen and 

 developed as in the Bible in the writings of the 

 prophets of the God of holiness, in the psalms, in 

 the gospels, and in Paul's epistles. From Paul's 

 various utterances on the great subject of sin the 

 latest Christian doctrine professes to be but a 

 development. 



