108 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1666. 



A new book of old matter: containing but a repetition of what he had before 

 told us more than once, and which hath been answered long ago. 



In which, though there be faults enough to offer ample matter for a large 

 confutation, yet I am scarce inclined to believe that any will bestow so much 

 pains upon it. For, if that be true, which in his preface he saith of himself, 

 aut solus insanio ego, aut solus nan insanio, it would either be needless, or to no 

 purpose. For, by his own confession, all others, if they be not mad themselves, 

 ought to think him so : and therefore as to them a confutation would be need- 

 less ; who, it is like, are well enough satisfied already, at least out of danger of 

 being seduced. And, as to himself, it would be to no purpose. For, if he be 

 the mad man, it is not to be hoped that he will be convinced by reason ; or, 

 if we all be so, we are in no capacity to attempt it. 



But there is yet another reason why I think it not to need a confutation. 

 Because what is in it has been sufficiently confuted already : and so effectually 

 as that he professes himself not to hope that this age is like to give sentence 

 for him, whatever nondum imhuta posteritas may do. Nor doth there appear any 

 reason why he should again repeat it, unless he can hope that what was at first 

 false may by oft repeating become true. 



I shall therefore, instead of a large answer, only give you a brief account of 

 what is in it, and where it has been already answered. 



The chief of what he has to say in his first ten chapters against Euclid's de- 

 finitions amounts but to this, that he thinks Euclid ought to have allowed his 

 point some bigness, his line some breadth, and his surface some thickness. 



But where in his dialogues he solemnly undertakes to demonstrate it, for it 

 is there his 4 1 st proposition, his demonstration amounts to no more than this ; 

 that unless a line be allowed some latitude it is not possible that his quadratures 

 can be true. For finding himself reduced to these inconveniences; 1. That his 

 geometrical construction would not consist with arithmetical calculations, nor 

 with what Archimedes and others have long demonstrated. 2. That the arch 

 of a circle must be allowed to be sometimes shorter than its chord, and some- 

 times longer than its tangent. 3. That the same straight line must be allowed 



return, he corresponded on scientific subjects. On the breaking out of the civil wars he retired into 

 France, where he became mathematical preceptor to the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles the 2d, 

 who had also fled to that country, and who, after the restoration, granted a pension to Mr. Hobbes 

 for his life. He wrote much on a variety of subjects, philosophy, matliematics, poetry, law, polity-, 

 &c, in most of which his opinions have been accounted heterogeneal. In consequence he was 

 almost always involved in warm and contentious disputes, particularly with the learned Dr. Wallis, 

 who attacked Hobbes' s pretended quadrature of the circle, &c. 

 % See a former notice of this book, at p. 85. 



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