Elements of Algebra

xiv EULER. species, and the method of applying all this to the solution of physical problems; these were the researches on which the mind of Euler delighted to dwell, and in which he never engaged without finding new objects of curiosity, detecting sources of inquiry, which had passed unobserved, and exploring fields of speculation and discovery, which before were unknown. The subjects, which we have here slightly enumerated, form, when taken together, what is called the Modern Analysis: a science eminent for the profound discoveries which it has revealed; for the refined artifices that have been devised, in order to bring the most abstruse parts of mathematics within the compass of our reasoning powers, and for applying them to the solution of actual phænomena, as well as for the remarkable degree of systematic simplicity, with which the various methods of investigation are employed and combined, so as to confirm and throw light on one another. The materials, indeed, had been collecting for years, from about the middle of the seventeenth century; the foundations had been laid by Newton, Leibnitz, the elder Bernoullis, and a few others; but Euler raised the superstructure: it was reserved for him to work upon the materials, and to arrange this noble monument of human industry and genius in its present symmetry. Through the whole course of his scientific labors, the ultimate and the constant aim on which he set his mind, was the perfection of Calculus