Page:Scientific Papers of Josiah Willard Gibbs - Volume 2.djvu/186

170 only a secondary object with Hamilton to express the geometrical relations of vectors,—secondary in time, and also secondary in this, that it was never allowed to give shape to his work.

But this relates to the past. In regard to the present atattua, I beg leave to quote what Mr. McAulay has said on another occasion (see Phil. Mag., June 1892):—"Quaternions differ in an important respect from other branches of mathematics that are studied by mathematicians after they have in the course of years of hard labour laid the foundation of all their future work. In nearly all cases these branches are very properly so called. They each grow out of a definite spot of the main tree of mathematics, and derive their sustenance from the sap of the trunk as a whole. But not so with quaternions. To let these grow in the brain of a mathematician, he must start from the seed as with the rest of his mathematics regarded as a whole. He cannot graft them on his already flourishing tree, for they will die there. They are independent plants that require separate sowing and the consequent careful tending."

Can we wonder that mathematicians, physicists, astronomers, and geometers feel some doubt as to the value or necessity of something so separate from all other branches of learning? Can that be a natural treatment of the subject which has no relations to any other method, and, as one might suppose from reading some treatises, has only occurred to a single man? Or, at best, is it not discouraging to be told that in order to use the quatemionic method, one must give up the progress which he has already made in the pursuit of his favourite science, and go back to the beginning and start anew on a parallel course?

I believe, however, that if what I have quoted is true of vector methods, it is because there is something fundamentally wrong in the presentation of the subject. Of course, in some sense and to some extent it is and must be true. Whatever is special, accidental, and individual, will die, as it should; but that which is universal and essential should remain as an organic part of the whole intellectual acquisition. If that which is essential dies with the accidental, it must be because the accidental has been given the prominence which belongs to the essential. For myself, I should preach no such doctrine to those whom I wish to convert to the true faith.

In Italy, they say, all roads lead to Rome. In mechanics, kinematics, astronomy, physics, all study leads to the consideration of certain relations and operations. These are the capital notions; these should have the leading parts in any analysis suited to the subject.

If I wished to attract the student of any of these sciences to an algebra for vectors, I should tell him that the fundamental notions of this algebra were exactly those with which he was daily