flkcT. i.] DISSERTATION SECOND. 19 



ing sufficiently, as he supposed, replied to Bernoulli and 

 his friends, he adds, " if they are not satisfied with the 

 solution, it must be ascribed to their own ignorance." 1 It 

 strongly marks the temper by which both sides were now 

 animated, when a man like Taylor, eminent for profound 

 science, and, in general, very much disposed to do justice 

 Jo the merits of others, should so forget himself as to re- 

 proach with ignorance of the calculus, one of the men 

 who understood it the best, and who had contributed the 

 most to its improvement. The irritability and prejudices 

 of Bernoulli admitted of no defence, and he might very 

 well have been accused of viewing the solution of New- 

 ton through a medium disturbed by their action ; but to 

 suppose that he was unable to understand it, was an im- 

 pertinence that could only react on the person who was 

 guilty of it. Bernoulli was not exemplary for his pa- 

 tience, and it will be readily believed, that the incivility 

 of Taylor was sufficiently revenged. It is painful to see 

 men of science engaged in such degrading altercation, and 

 I should be inclined to turn from so disagreeable an ob- 

 ject, if the bad effects of the spirit thus excited were not 

 such as must again obtrude themselves on the notice of the 

 reader. 



Taylor not long after came forward with an open defi- 

 ance to the whole Continent, and proposed a problem, 

 Omnibus geometris non Angiis, — a problem, of course, 

 which he supposed that the English mathematicians alone 

 were sufficiently enlightened to resolve. He selected one, 

 accordingly, of very considerable difficulty, — the integration 

 of a fluxion of a complicated form ; which, nevertheless, 

 admitted of being done in a very elegant manner, known, 

 1 believe, at that time to very few of the English mathemati- 



1 Eorum imperitiae tribuendum est. 





