JURIN V. ROBINS AND PEMBERTON 127 



assertion groundless he ought to have shown, that 

 this definition does not attempt at describing sudi 

 an intermediate state" (p. (15)). Robins asserts : 

 **Whoever has read Sir Isaac Newton's Lectiones 

 OpticcB^ and will deny, that he has at any time 

 made use of indivisibles, must be very much a 

 stranger to that doctrine, and to the style of those 

 writers who foUow it " (p. (19)). '' What reflexion 

 is it upon Sir Isaac Newton to suppose, that he 

 made use of the methods he had learned from others 

 before he had invented better of his own : or that 

 in an analysis of a problem for dispatch he stili 

 continued to make use of such methods, when he 

 conceived it would create no error in the conclusion ? 

 Has not Sir Isaac Newton said this of himself, and 

 has Mr. Robins said anything more?" (p. (15)). 

 "Does Philalethes here mean, that a quantity can 

 become less than any finite quantity whatsoever, 

 before it vanishes into nothing? If not, then the 

 point is given up to Mr. Robins, who only contends, 

 that vanishing quantities can never by their diminu- 

 tion be brought at last into any state or condition, 

 wherein to bear the proportion called their ultimate : 

 if otherwise, since Philalethes supposes . . . that 

 it is nonsense, that it implies a contradiction to 

 imagine a quantity actually existing fixed, deter- 

 minate, invariable, indivisible, less than any finite 

 quantity whatsoever ; because this imports as much 

 as the conception of a quantity less than any 

 quantity, that can be conceived : how can a quantity 

 supposed to be less than any finite quantity whatso- 



