Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/394

 reported on 24 April 1712, and the report was printed with the title ‘Commercium Epistolicum D. Johannis Collins et aliorum de analysi promota.’ The main points of the report were that Leibnitz had been in communication with Collins, ‘who was very free in communicating to able mathematicians what he had received from Mr. Newton and Mr. Gregory;’ that when in London Leibnitz had claimed Mouton's differential method as his own, and that until 1677, after he had heard from Newton, there is no evidence that he knew any other method; that Newton had invented the method of fluxions before July 1669; that the differential method is one and the same as the method of fluxions; ‘and therefore,’ the committee continued, ‘we take the proper question to be not who invented this or that method, but who was the first Inventor.’ They conclude that those who reckon Leibnitz as the first inventor did not know of Newton's correspondence with Collins. ‘For which reasons we reckon Mr. Newton the first inventor, and are of opinion that Mr. Keill, in asserting the same, has been in no ways injurious to Mr. Leibnitz.’ Leibnitz did not publicly reply. His reasons for this were given later in a letter to Conti on 9 April 1716, already quoted (, History of Fluxions, pp. 103, 105;, Short Hist. of Math. p. 366): he would have to refer to old letters, and had not kept his papers; he had no leisure, being occupied by business of quite another character, and so on. He circulated, however, a loose sheet entitled ‘Charta Volans,’ containing a letter from an eminent mathematician, and his own notes on it. The letter attacked Newton, and expressed the opinion that it appeared probable that he had formed his calculus after seeing that of Leibnitz, and had taken some of its ideas from Hooke and Huyghens without acknowledgment. The eminent mathematician was Bernoulli (letter of Leibnitz to Count Bothmar des Maizeaux); but he, when pressed to explain or justify his charges, solemnly denied that he had written such a letter. The controversy still went on. Towards the end of 1715 the Abbé Conti, on receiving a letter from Leibnitz ( History of Fluxions, p. 97), tried to terminate it, and collated the various papers at the Royal Society. Newton was persuaded to write to Conti his views of the dispute (ib. p. 100) for transmission to Leibnitz, and Conti, in his covering letter to Leibnitz, wrote: ‘From all this I infer that, if all digressions are cut off, the only point is whether Sir Isaac Newton had the method of fluxions or infinitesimals before you, or whether you had it before him. You published it first, it is true; but you have owned that Sir Isaac Newton had given many hints of it in his letters to Mr. Oldenburg and others. This is proved very largely in the “Commercium” and in the “Extract” of it. What answer do you give? This is still wanting to the public, in order to form an exact judgment of the affair’ (, Life of Newton, vol. ii. chap. xx.). The ‘Extract’ referred to is a paper which was published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for January 1716, and is entitled ‘An Account of the Book entituled “Commercium Epistolicum.”’ Professor de Morgan (Phil. Mag. June 1852) gave strong reasons for believing that Newton was the author, and the Portsmouth papers confirm this view. Leibnitz's reply was sent to De Montmort in Paris, to be transmitted to Conti, on 9 April 1716. It is printed in Raphson's ‘History of Fluxions,’ pp. 103–10. Leibnitz concludes: ‘Newton finit sa Lettre en m'accusant d'être l'aggresseur et j'ai commencé celle-ci en prouvant le contraire. … Il y a eu du mesentendu, mais ce n'est pas ma faute.’ At the same time Bernoulli wrote a second anonymous attack on Newton, which he called ‘Epistola pro eminente Mathematico Domino Joanne Bernoillio contra quemdam ex Anglia antagonistam scripta;’ this was published, with alterations, by Leibnitz in the ‘Acta’ for July 1716. Keill replied in a letter to Bernoulli, which he closed with the words, ‘Si pergis dicere quæ vis, audies quæ non vis.’ Leibnitz died on 14 Nov. 1716. Newton shortly afterwards published a reply which had been in circulation for some time—it was written in May—to Leibnitz's letter of 9 April (see, History of Fluxions, p. 111). Soon afterwards the Abbé Varignon reconciled Newton and Bernoulli. A fresh edition of the ‘Commercium’ was published in 1725, with the review or extract already mentioned and notes. The notes, like the review, were by Newton.

Newton in 1724 modified in the third edition of the ‘Principia’ the scholium relating to fluxions, in which Leibnitz had been mentioned by name. Leibnitz and his friends had always held this scholium to be an acknowledgment of his claim to originality. Thus Biot says that ‘Newton eternalised that right by recognising it in the “Principia” … while in the third edition he had the weakness to leave out … the famous scholium in which he had admitted the rights of his rival.’ But this was not Newton's interpretation of the scholium; he regarded it, as Brewster says, as a statement of the simple fact that Leibnitz communicated to

Newton in 1724 modified in the third edition of the ‘Principia’ the scholium relating to fluxions, in which Leibnitz had been mentioned by name. Leibnitz and his friends had always held this scholium to be an acknowledgment of his claim to originality. Thus Biot says that ‘Newton eternalised that right by recognising it in the “Principia” … while in the third edition he had the weakness to leave out … the famous scholium in which he had admitted the rights of his rival.’ But this was not Newton's interpretation of the scholium; he regarded it, as Brewster says, as a statement of the simple fact that Leibnitz communicated to