I30 LIMITS AND FLUXIONS 



Pemberton says : ''I . . . am fuUy satisfied, that 

 Mr. Robins has expressed Sir Isaac Newton's real 

 meaning. " Pemberton quotes from Newton's Intro- 

 duction to the Quadrature of Curves about prime and 

 ultimate ratios (see.our §§ 33, 42), and then remarks; 

 ** Here Sir Isaac Newton expressly calls the quan- 

 titates nascentes and evanescentes, whose prime and 

 ultimate ratios he investigates, by the appellation of 

 finite. Now I desire Philalethes to reconcile this 

 passage with his notion of a * nascent quantity 

 being a quantity not yet arrived at any assignable 

 magnitude how small soever. ' And I must farther 

 ask Philalethes, whether he has not here attempted 

 to define a non-entity. " 



138. Robins's last article and Pemberton's rash 

 challenge led to another flow of words, covering 

 77 pages in the ' ' Appendix " to the Republick of 

 Letters for November, 1736, in an article by Jurin, 

 entitled Obseiuations upon some Remarks relating to 

 the Method of Fluxions, published in the Republick of 

 Letters for August last, and in the Appendix to that 

 for September. 



Jurin insists that *'the method of fluxions, as it 

 is drawn up by Sir Isaac Newton, could not possibly 

 h^ formed befoi^e the method of first and last ratio's 

 was invented'' (p. (6)). 



Robins " takes no notice of the letter being 

 used in the hook of Quadratures^ in the very same 

 sense as in the Analysis'' (p. (8)). "That symbol 

 never denotes any quantity, but what, by a con- 

 tinuai decrease, becomes infinitely little, i.e. less 



