204 LIMITS AND FLUXIONS 



Philalethes comme défenseur de la vérité, s'est 

 chargé de lui signifier qu'on n'en croyoit rien, 

 qu'on entendoit fort bien Newton sans Robin, que 

 les pensées & les expressìons de ce grand Philo- 

 sophes sont justes & très-claires . . ., ce sont des 

 piéces d'une mauvaise critique. ..." 



Buffon presents no argument against the views 

 expressed by Robins, but abuses him for presum- 

 ing to think independently. This doting attitude 

 toward Newton is justly attacked by James Wilson, 

 in bis Appendix to the Mathematica/ Tracts of the 

 late Benjamin Robins^ voi. ii, London, 1761, pp. 

 325-327. Wilson rightly says that if it was a 

 crime for Robins to make mention of the great 

 brevity with which Sir Isaac Newton wrote, Robins 

 was foUowed in it by Maclaurin and Saunderson. 

 "The truth is," says Wilson, "Sir Isaac Newton 

 at first made the same use of indivisibles, others 

 had done : in his Analysis pei' cequationes numero 

 terminorum infinitas, he expressly says, * Nec vereor 

 loqui de unitate in punctis, sive lineis infinite 

 parvis ^ ; ' and in his Lectiones Opticce he demon- 

 strated by indivisibles." Wilson contends further- 

 more that Buffon is wrong in claiming that the 

 mathematicians paid no regard to what Robins 

 had said, that in fact "the best writers soon 

 after trod in Mr. Robins's steps." In fairness 

 to Buffon it should be said, however, that he 

 printed his Preface in 1740, and that Maclaurin, 

 Saunderson, de Bougainville, and d'Alembert, whom 

 1 Cojnm. Epist, p. 85. 



