sict. i.] DISSERTATION SECOND. 15 



a good deal of asperity and unsupported insinuation ; the 

 Recensio, or review of it, inserted in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions for 1715, though written with ability, is still more 

 liable to the same censure. 



In the year (1713) which followed the publication of the 

 Commercium Epistolicum, a paragraph was circulated among 

 the mathematicians of Europe, purporting to be the judgment 

 of a mathematician on the invention of the new analysis. 

 The author was not named, but was generally understood to 

 be John Bernoulli, of which, indeed, the terms in which 

 Leibnitz speaks of the judgment leave no room to doubt. 

 Bernoulli was without question well acquainted with the sub- 

 ject in dispute ; he was a perfect master of the calculus ; ha 

 had been one of the great instruments of its advancement, 

 and, except impartiality, possessed every requisite for a 

 judge. Without offence it might be said, that he could 

 scarcely be accounted impartial. He had been a party 

 in all that had happened ; — warmly attached as he was 

 to the one side, and greatly exasperated against the other, 

 his temper had been more frequently ruffled, and his pas- 

 sions or prejudices more violently excited, than those of any 

 other individual. With all his abilities, therefore, he was 

 not likely to prove the fairest and most candid judge* in a 

 cause that might almost be considered as his own. His sen- 

 tence, however, is pronounced in calm and temperate lan- 

 guage, and amounts to this, That there is ?io reason to believe, 

 that the jluxionary calculus was invented before the diffe- 

 rential. 1 shall refer to a note 1 the discussion of the evi- 

 dence which he points out as the ground of this decision, 

 though the facts already stated might be considered as suffi- 

 cient to enable the reader to form an opinion on the subject. 

 The friends of Leibnitz hurt their own cause, by attempting 



1 Note C, at the end 



