420 D'ALEMBERT. 



dorcet, who only knew the Theorem from this exposi- 

 tion of it, treats him as certainly being its author; and 

 D'Alernbert himself, citing no other discoverer, plainly 

 gives it as altogether his own.* 



I have thought it better to pursue the same method 

 in treating of D'Alembert's works that I adopted re- 

 specting Voltaire's,f giving all his scientific researches, 

 his important physical and analytical discoveries, in a 

 connected order, and thus avoiding the interruption of 

 the series which an exclusive regard to the chronolo- 

 gical succession of his different works on all subjects 

 would have occasioned. We must now return to the 

 history of his life, and the other pursuits with which 

 his severer studies were interrupted, and his enjoy- 

 ments, as it were, variegated. 



In those scientific pursuits, the history of which we 

 have been surveying, he passed the first eighteen years 

 after he left the College, and he passed them in un- 

 interrupted tranquillity and happiness, in tasting the 

 pleasure of contemplating the relations of necessary 

 truths, in adding to the number which had been before 

 ascertained, and in enlarging the sphere of his own 

 usefulness as well as his fame. His existence had been 

 one which the children of this world, the pampered sons 

 of wealth and fashion, the votaries of vulgar pleasure, 

 and the slaves of ordinary ambition would regard as 

 obscure and even wretched ; for he had neither wealth 

 nor rank, and all his gratifications were of a purely in- 

 tellectual kind. But his enjoyment had been unbroken ; 

 he had no wants unsupplied ; he tasted perfect tran- 

 quillity of mind ; and his friends, who esteemed him, 



* If very small things might be compared to great, I should note the 

 circumstance the accident, I may well term it of my having hit upon 

 the Binomial Theorem, and given it as an exercise to Professor Playfair, 

 when attending his class in 1794. He kept my paper, and used to men- 

 tion this circumstance. He said he concluded I had found it only by in- 

 duction, which was true. The demonstration is, indeed, of considerable 

 difficulty. 



f In Vol. II. of this Series. 



