ON THE HISTORY OF MECHANICS. 191 



J their master ; no opponent, nor even a cool admirer, dared to appear. His 

 philosophy was adopted throughout England, and it is supported in the 

 * Royal Society, and in all the excellent productions of the members of that 

 Society, with as much confidence, as if it had heeii consecrated by the 

 respect of a long course of ages." A remarkable instance of the extent and 

 refinement of Newton's mathematical acquirements may be found in a paper 

 of a celebrated modern mathematician, on the subject of atmospherical 

 refraction ; Mr. Kramp* observes, with a mixture of surprise and doubt, 

 that Newton appears to have been acquainted with those methods of alge- 

 braical calculation which he had himself pursued ; at the same time he 

 says that this is almost incredible, since " he must have discovered certain 

 improvements in the higher analysis which were unknown even to Euler, 

 and to every other mathematician before Laplace." 



Although Newton was unquestionably the first inventor of the method of 

 fluxions, yet Leibnitz, whether he had received any hints of Newton's 

 ideas, as there is some reason to suspect, or whether his investigations were 

 wholly independent of those of Newton, was the first that published any 

 work on the subject ; and he extended its application to many important 

 problems, earlier, perhaps, than any English mathematician. James and 

 John Bernoulli also pursued the same studies with considerable success, 

 and the general laws of mechanics were very elegantly investigated, and 

 successfully applied by these three contemporary philosophers on the con- 

 tinent, while Machin, Cotes, Halley, and Demoivre, were applying them- 

 selves to similar pursuits in this country. Perrault, Lahire, Amontons, 

 and Parent, members of the Parisian academy of sciences, were the authors 

 of many useful investigations relating to practical mechanics ; but few of 

 them were made public till after the year 1700 ; some of their inventions 

 made their appearance much later, in the valuable collection of machines 

 approved by the academy, and some of them have been inserted in the 

 useful work published by Leupold, at Leipzig, under the title of a Theatrum 

 Machinarum. Throughout the last century, the transactions of various 

 societies, established for the promotion of science, became every year more 

 numerous, and the publication of the literary journals of Leipzig and of 

 Paris formed a mode of communication which was extremely serviceable 

 in facilitating the dissemination of all new discoveries. 



The philosophy of Newton assumed also a more popular and attractive 

 form in the writings of Clarke,t Pemberton,^ Maclaurin, and Musschen- 

 broek, || and the lectures of S'Gravesande and Desaguliers; at the same 

 time that its more refined investigations were pursued with success in this 

 country by Maclaurin and Simpson, and on the continent by Hermann, 

 Daniel Bernoulli, Leonard Euler, and Clairaut. Maclaurin, Bernoulli, 

 and Euler, had the honour of sharing with each other the prize, proposed 

 by the academy of sciences at Paris, for the best essay on the intricate 

 subject of the tides; but a premature death prevented Maclaurin from 



* Hindenburgs Archiv. ii. 380, 499. 



f Demonstration of some Sections of Newton's Prin. 1730. 

 t View of Sir I. Newton's Ph. 4to, 1728. 



Account of Sir I. Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, 4to, Lond. 1748. 

 || Introductio ad Phil. Nat. 2 vols. Leyd. 1762. 



