PRINTED BOOKS, ETC, BEFORE 1734 49 



listment of the services of a clever lawyer would be 

 needed to acquit the editors of the Conimercium 

 Epistolicum of gross error when, in the final summary 

 of their case against Leibniz, they declare (p. 121), 

 "that the Differential Method is one and the same 

 with the Method of Fluxions, excepting the name and 

 the notation ; Mr. Leibniz calling those Quantities 

 Uifferences, which Mr. Newton calls Moments or 

 Fluxions ; and marking them with the letter d^ a 

 mark not used by Newton." 



òj . Joseph Raphson, in bis History of Fluxions 

 (which appeared as a posthumous work at London, 

 in 171 5, printed in English, and in the same year 

 also in Latin, the Latin edition containing new corre- 

 spondence hearing on the Newton-Leibniz contro- 

 versy), says on p. 5 that Newton ' ' makes use of 

 Points, and denotes those first Differences (which by 

 a Name congruous to their Generation, being con- 

 sider'd as the first Increments or Decrements of a 

 continued Motion, he calls Fluxions) thus, viz. x, j>, 

 -c. " This misrepresentation of Newton is the more 

 astonishing when we recollect that Raphson was 

 very partial to Newton, and also meant his History 

 **to open a plain and easy way for Beginners to 

 understand these Matters. " Newton never looked 

 upon a fluxion as anything different from velocity ; 

 with him it was always a finite quantity. To make 

 matters worse, Raphson continues : "To these 

 Quantities he adds others of another Gender, and 

 which in relation to Finite ones may be conceiv'd as 

 infinitely great, and denotes them thus 'x, 'y, 'z, 



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