40 DISSERTATION SECOND. [partu. 



to increase, just in proportion to the number and importance 

 of the questions, physical and mathematical, which were 

 found to depend on these integrations. The habit of study- 

 ing only our own authors on these subjects, produced at first 

 by our admiration of Newton and our dislike to his rivals, 

 and increased by a circumstance very insignificant in itself, 

 the diversity of notation prevented us from partaking in the 

 pursuits of our neighbours ; and cut us off in a great measure 

 from the vast field in which the genius of France, of Ger- 

 many, and Italy, was exercised with so much activity and 

 success. Other causes may have united in the production 

 of an effect, which the mathematicians of this country have 

 had much reason to regret ; but the evil had its origin in 

 the spirit of jealousy and opposition, which arose from the 

 controversies that have just passed under our review. The 

 habits so produced continued long after the spirit itself had 

 subsided. 



It must not be supposed, that so great a revolution in 

 science, as that which was made by the introduction of the 

 new analysis, could be brought about entirely without oppo- 

 sition, as in every society there are some who think them- 

 selves interested to maintain things in the condition wherein 

 they have found them. The considerations are indeed suffi- 

 ciently obvious which, in the moral and political world, 

 tend to produce this effect, and to give a stability to human 

 institutions, often so little proportionate to their real value 

 or to their general utility. Even in matters purely intel- 

 lectual, and in which the abstract truths of arithmetic and 

 geometry seem alone concerned, the prejudices, the selfish- 

 ness, or vanity of those who pursue them, not unfrequently 

 combine to resist improvement, and often engage no in- 

 considerable degree of talent in drawing back instead of 

 pushing forward the machine of science. The introduction 

 «f methods entirely new must often change the relative place 



