164 SIMSON. 



though he has solved the problems and demonstrated 

 the theorems with a most wonderful skill, by means 

 purely geometrical, yet he never could have obtained 

 either the solutions or the demonstrations had not 

 Newton preceded him, " his own analysis carrying the 

 torch before."* The most celebrated proposition in all 

 the * Principia,' the general solution of the inverse pro- 

 blem of central forces,f (lib. i. prop, xli.) is closely 

 followed by Stewart, and the diagrams are nearly the 

 same. 



This, however, is not the only ground of regret ; for 

 had it been so, the teacher's defect has been thus sup- 

 plied by the scholar. But good cause remains to 

 lament that both of those great masters did not abate 

 somewhat of their devotion to the Greek Geometry, 

 and instead of being captivated only with the view of 

 its incomparable beauty, did not help forward by 

 their discoveries those branches of the science which, 

 though they may have far less grace, have yet a far 

 wider range and far greater usefulness. Surely it is 

 deeply to be lamented that such extraordinary powers 

 of original investigation as both these great men pos- 

 sessed should, especially in the case of Stewart, have 

 been wasted upon what Professor Robison's learned 

 wit terms " a superstitious palasology," and in the over- 

 coming of difficulties raised by themselves of reaching 

 the point in view by a devious and hard ascent, when a 

 short and an easy path lay open before them of doing, 

 and not very well doing, by an imperfect though ele- 

 gant tool, and with no help from machinery, the same 

 work which might with far better success and greater 

 facility have been performed by the most perfect in- 

 strument that ever man invented; as the laborious, 

 patient, and ignorant Hindu, will with a knife carve 



* " Sua mathesi facem praeferente." Halley. 



f I am aware of Professor Robison's statement, already cited, of Dr. 

 Simson's opinion that the thirty-ninth proposition is the greatest of all, 

 but I cannot help suspecting the forty-first to be intended. 



