[463] De Morgan quotes from one of the Latin editions. Descartes wrote in French, the title of his first edition being: Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences, plus la dioptrique, les météores et la géométrie qui sont des essais de cette méthode, Leyden, 1637, 4to.
[464] "I have observed that algebra indeed, as it is usually taught, is so restricted by definite rules and formulas of calculation, that it seems rather a confused kind of an art, by the practice of which the mind is in a certain manner disturbed and obscured, than a science by which it is cultivated and made acute."
[465] It appeared in 93 volumes, from 1758 to 1851.
[466] The principles of the doctrine of life-annuities; explained in a familiar manner ... with a variety of new tables ..., London, 1783.
[467] I suppose the one who wrote Conjectures on the physical causes of Earthquakes and Volcanoes, Dublin, 1820.
[468] Scriptores Logarithmici; or, a Collection of several curious tracts on the nature and construction of Logarithms ... together with same tracts on the Binomial Theorem ..., 6 vols., London, 1791-1807.
[469] Charles Babbage (1792-1871), whose work on the calculating machine is well known. Maseres was, it is true, ninety-two at this time, but Babbage was thirty-one instead of twenty-nine. He had already translated Lacroix's Treatise on the differential and integral calculus (1816), in collaboration with Herschel and Peacock. He was Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge from 1828 to 1839.
[470] The great and new Art of weighing Vanity, or a discovery of the ignorance of the great and new artist in his pseudo-philosophical writings. The "great and new artist" was Sinclair.
[471] George Sinclair, probably a native of East Lothian, who died in 1696. He was professor of philosophy and mathematics at Glasgow, and was one of the first to use the barometer in measuring altitudes. The work to which De Morgan refers is his Hydrostaticks (1672). He was a firm believer in evil spirits, his work on the subject going through four editions: Satan's Invisible World Discovered; or, a choice collection of modern relations, proving evidently against the Saducees and Athiests of this present age, that there are Devils, Spirits, Witches, and Apparitions, Edinburgh, 1685.
[472] This was probably William Sanders, Regent of St. Leonard's College, whose Theses philosophicae appeared in 1674, and whose Elementa geometriae came out a dozen years later.