200 LIMirS AND FLUXIONS 



the Monthly Review, Stockler denies the reviewer's 

 allegation that he [Stockler] supposed quantity to 

 be generated by motion. *'The idea of motion, 

 and the idea of velocity, are too particular to be 

 admitted into a general theory of fluent quantities. " ^ 



Review of Lacroix's '^ Calcul dìfférentiel" 1800 



223. A review of S. F. La Croix's Traìté 

 dii calcul différentiel'^ served as the occasion of 

 further comments and criticisms of fundamental 

 concepts : 



'' Who would direct his ridicule against the refine- 

 ments, subtleties, and trifling of the schoolmen, if he 

 read what has been written by some men who were 

 presumed to be the greatest masters of reason, and 

 whose employment and peculiar privilege consisted 

 in deducing truth by the justest inferences from 

 the most evident principles ? The history of the 

 differential calculus, indeed, shows that even mathe- 

 maticians sometimes bend to authority and a name, 

 are influenced by other motives than a love of truth, 

 and occasionally use (like other men) false meta- 

 physics and false logie. No one can doubt this, who 

 reads the controversial writings to which the inven- 

 tion of fluxions gave rise : he will there find most 

 exquisite reasonings concerning quantities which 

 survived their grave, and, when they ceased to 

 exist, did not cease to operate ; concerning an in- 

 finite derivation of velocities, — and a progeny of 



^ Monthly Review, voi. xxxii, p. 497. 



^ Monthly Review^ voi. xxxi, London, 1800, p. 493. 



