458 
but of its amount in 1802, there appears 
only 7,823]. which is ftated to be arrears. 
he amount of the year 1803 appears, 
by this account, to have been only 
44,8521. 
ORIGINAL LETTERS. 
Ex Bib. St. Fohn, Oxon. 
Dr. Fckn Wallis*to Mr. Tenifon, (afier- 
wards Archbifbop Tenifon) at the Bifbop 
of St. Ajcephs Houfe in Leiceffer Fields 
London, containing an account of Mr. 
Hobbes and bis Writings. 
Oxjord November 30, 1680. 
SIR, 
if RECEIVED your's of the zs5th of 
November, and approve the defign. 
The Life you fpeak of, I have not feen, 
nor do I know that I ever faw the man.* 
Of his writings, I have read very little 
fave what relates to mathematics. By 
that I find him to bave been of a bold 
and daring fancy to venture at any thing, 
but he wanted judgment to underftand 
the confequence of an argument, and to 
{peak coniiftently with himfelf. Whereby 
his argumentations which he pretends to 
be demonfirative, are very often but 
weak and incoherent difcourfes, and def. 
tructive in one part of what is faid in 
another, fometimes within the compafs of 
the fame page or leaf. This is more 
convincingly evident (and unpardonable) 
in mathematics, than in other difcourfe, 
which are things capable of cogent de- 
monftration and fo evident that, (though 
' a good mathematician may be fubjeét to 
commit an error) yet one who underftands 
but little of it, cannot but fee a fault 
when it is fhewn him. For (they are his 
own words. Leviathan part 1. cap. 5. 
p. 21.) whe is fo ffupid as both to miffake 
in geometry, and alfo to perfif? im it when 
another deteéis his error to him? Now 
when fo many hundred paralogifms and 
falfe propofitions have been fhewed him 
in his mathematics by thofe who have 
written again{t him, and that fo evidently 
that no one mathematician at home or 
abroad (no, not thofe of his intimate 
friends) have been found to juftify him 
in any one of them, which makes him 
fomewhere fay of himfelf, Aut ego folns 
infanio, aut folus no infanio, he hath been 
yet foftupid (to ufe his own word) to 
perfift in them, and to repeat and defend 
them: particularly he hach firft and laf 
given us near twenty quadratures of the 
circle, of which fome few, though falf, 
have been coincident (which therefore I 
repute for the fame only differently dif- 
* Wir. Hobbes. 
Letter of Dr. Weailis on Hobbes. 
{June 1, 
guifed, but more than a dozen of them 
are fuch as no two of them are con- 
fiftent; and yet he would have them 
thought to be all true. Now either he 
thought fo himfelf (and then you muft 
take him to be a perfon of a very fhallow 
capacity, and not fuch a man of reafon 
as he would be thought to be); or, elle 
knowing them to be falfe, was obilinately 
refolved notwith{tanding to maintain them 
as true, (and he muft then be a perfon of 
no faith or honefty) ; and if he argues at 
this rate in mathematics, what are we to 
expect in his other difcourfes ? 
Nor am I the firft who have taken no- 
tice of his incoherent way of difcourie 
and illogical inferences. Mr. Boyle, in 
his Examen of Mr. Hobbes’s Dialogus 
Phyficus de Natura Aé€ris, p. 15, (and I 
think elfewhere, though I do not remem- 
ber the place) refers to Dr. Ward’s Dif- 
fertatio in Philofophiam Hobbianam, p. 
188, who voucheth Des Cartes to the fame 
purpofe; ‘* Nempe hoc ef quod alicubt 
admiratus eft magnus Cartefius nufqnam 
eum, five verum, five falfum pofuerit, reéte 
aliquid ex SuppofitionibusAcademiarum,” 
againft one Webfter with fome animad- 
verfions on Mr. Hobbes. He had in his 
younger days fome little infight in ma- 
thematics, and which, at that time, (when 
few had any) paffed for a great deal. On 
the credit of which he did much bear up 
himfelf as a great man, and having 
fomewhat fingular, and thereupon defpifed 
divines as not being philofophers or not 
mathematicians, without which he would 
have it thought impoffible to do any good 
in philofophy ;—De Corpore cap. 6. fect. 
6—and fo long as he did but talk and for-. 
bear to write, he did by his own report 
pafs for a mathematician: but when once 
he began to write mathematics, he pre- 
fently fell into thofe grofs abfurdities, and 
difcovered in him(elf fuch an incapacity 
for it, as could not have been imagined 
of him if he had forborne to write: and 
truly I look upon it as a great providence 
that God fhould leave him to fo great a 
degree of infatuation in that, wherein he 
did fo much pride himfelf. For whereas 
in difcourfes of other fubjeéts, miftakes 
may be fhuffled over with a multitude of 
great words, in mathematics it cannot. be 
foj—and hereby he difcovered him(elf 
(without poffibility of palliation), not to. 
be that man of reafon he would be thought 
to be. For though a man may be rational 
who is not a mathematician, (and had he 
not pretended to it, his ignorance had 
been excufable) but for fo great a pre- 
tender, and whe had gloried in it for fo 
long 
eo ee a 
