_negative quantities_. It is one of Kant's grandest gleams into hidden
truth. Were it only for the merits of this most masterly essay in
reconstituting the algebraic meaning of a _negative quantity_ [so
generally misunderstood as a _negation_ of quantity, and which even Sir
Isaac Newton misconstrued as regarded its metaphysics], great would have
been the service rendered to logic by Kant. But there is a greater. From
this little _brochure_ I am satisfied was derived originally the German
regeneration of the Dynamic philosophy, its expansion through the idea of
polarity, indifference, &c. Oh, Mr. Schlosser, you had not _gepruft_ p. 5
of vol. 2. You skipped the notes.

[3] '_Little nurse_:'--the word _Glumdalclitch_, in Brobdingnagian,
absolutely _means little nurse_, and nothing else. It may seem odd that
the captain should call any nurse of Brobdingnag, however kind to him, by
such an epithet as _little_; and the reader may fancy that Sherwood forest
had put it into his head, where Robin Hood always called his right hand
man 'Little John,' not _although_, but expressly _because_ John stood
seven feet high in his stockings. But the truth is--that Glumdalclitch
_was_ little; and literally so; she was only nine years old, and (says the
captain) 'little of her age,' being barely forty feet high. She had time
to grow certainly, but as she had so much to do before she could overtake
other women, it is probable that she would turn out what, in Westmoreland,
they call a, _little stiffenger_--very little, if at all, higher than a
common English church steeple.

[4.] '_Activity_,'--It is some sign of this, as well as of the more
thoroughly English taste in literature which distinguished Steele, that
hardly twice throughout the 'Spectator' is Shakspeare quoted or alluded to
by Addison. Even these quotations he had from the theatre, or the breath
of popular talk. Generally, if you see a line from Shakspeare, it is safe