MONTMORT. 81 



Montmort gives his reasons for not devoting a part to the appli- 

 cation of his subject to political, economical, and moral questions, 

 in conformity with the known design of James Bernoulli; see his 

 pages XIII — XX. His reasons contain a good appreciation of the 

 difficulty that must attend all such applications, and he thus states 

 the conditions under which we may attempt them with advantage: 

 1^. borner la question que Ton se propose h un petit nombre de 

 suppositions, etablies sur des faits certains; 2". faire abstraction do 

 toutes les circonstances ausquelles la liberte de I'homme, cet 

 ocueil perpetuel de nos connoissances, pourroit avoir quelque part. 

 Montmort praises highly the memoir by Halley, which we have 

 already noticed ; and also commends Petty's Political A rithmetic ; 

 see Arts. 57, 01. 



Montmort refers briefly to his predecessors, Huygens, Pascal, 

 and Format. He says that his work is intended principally for 

 mathematicians, and that he has fully explained the various games 

 which he discusses because, pour I'ordinaire les S^avans ne sont 

 pas Joueurs; see his page xxiii. 



142. After the preface follows an Avertissement which was not 

 in the first edition. Montmort sa3^s that two small treatises on 

 the subject had appeared since his first edition; namely a thesis 

 by Nicolas Bernoulli De arte conjectandi in Jure, and a memoir 

 by De Moivre, De meiisura sortis. 



Montmort seems to have been much displeased with the terms 

 in which reference was made to him by De Moivre. De Moivre 

 had said, 



Ilugenius, primus quod sciani regulas tradidit ad istius generis Pro- 

 blematum Solutionem, quas nuperrimus autor Gallus variis exemplis 

 pulclire illustravit ; sed non videntur viri clarissimi ea simplicitate ac 

 generalitate usi fuisse quam natura rei postulabat : etenirn dum p] ures 

 quantitates incognitas usurpant, ut varias Collusorum conditiones re- 

 praesentent, calculum siumi nimis perplexum redduut ; diimque Colhi- 

 sorum dexteritatem semper aequalem pomint, doctriuam hanc ludorum 

 intra limites nimis arctos continent. 



Montmort seems to have taken needless offence at these words ; 

 he thought his own performances were undervalued, and accord- 

 ingly he defends his own claims : this leads him to give a sketch 



6 



