2 IO LIMITS AND FLUXIONS 



mistakes the efifect for the cause ; for the thing 

 generateci must owe its existence to something, and 

 this can only be the velocity of its motion ; but it 

 can never be the cause of itself, as his definition 

 would erroneously suggest. " Moreover, it is strange 

 that Simpson " should stili stick in the mud and 

 run himself into the old exploded method used by 

 foreigners ; and which is subject to ali the cavils 

 that bave ever been raised against that science." 



184. This criticism originated a small tempest. 

 In a journal called Mathematical Exercises,^ its 

 editor, John Turner, makes certain '* Observations 

 on certain invidious Aspersions on Mr. Simpson's 

 Doctrine and Application of Fluxions, published in 

 the Monthly Review for December last, by Canta- 

 brigiensis." Mr. Simpson is there charged as having 

 *' mistaken the Effect for the Cause " ; Mr. Simpson, 

 says Turner, " builds upon his own Definition; 



* Mathematical Exercises No. Ili (i75i)> P- 34- Six numbers of this 

 journal appeared in London in 1750-1752. No. V bears the date 1752 ; 

 No. VI has no date. Readers are invited " to send their Performances 

 (whether new Problems, Paradoxes, Solutions, etc.) Post paid, to 

 be left with Mr. James Morgan, at the Three-Cranes, in Thames- 

 street . . ." In this connection a statement made by Charles Hutton, 

 in his Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Author [Thomas 

 Simpson], printed in Thomas Simpson's Select Exercises in the 

 MathematicSy new edition, London, 1792, p. xviii, is of interest : 



" It has also been commonly supposed that he [Thomas Simpson] 

 was the real editor of, or had a principal share in, two other periodica! 

 Works of a miscellaneous mathematical nature ; viz. the Mathematician , 

 and Turner's Mathematical Exercises^ two volumes, in 8vo, which 

 carne out in periodica! numbers, in the years 1750 and 1751, etc. The 

 latter of these seems especially to bave been set on foot to afford a 

 proper place for exposing the errors and absurdities of Mr. Robert Heath, 

 the then conductor of the Ladies Diaryaxid the Palladium ; and which 

 controversy between them endcd in the disgrace of Mr. Heath, and 

 expulsiou trom his office nf editor to the Ladies^ Diary, and the substi- 

 tution of Mr. Simpson in his stcad, in the year 1753." 



