questions.

[Footnote 9: A species of binary arithmetic, invented by Leibnitz,
in which the only figures employed are 0 and 1.--See KORTHOLT'S
_G.C. Leibnitii Epistolae ad Divarsos_, Letter XVIII.]

[Transcriber's note: without this notation and its underlying logic,
the development of modern computers would have not been practical.]

Of this world-wide correspondence a portion related to the sore
subject of his litigated claim to originality in the discovery of
the Differential Calculus,--a matter in which Leibnitz felt himself
grievously wronged, and complained with justice of the treatment he
received at the hands of his contemporaries. The controversy between
him and Newton, respecting this hateful topic, would never have
originated with either of these illustrious men, had it depended on
them alone to vindicate their respective claims. Officious and
ill-advised friends of the English philosopher, partly from misguided
zeal and partly from levelled malice, preferred on his behalf a
charge of plagiarism against the German, which Newton was not likely
to have urged for himself. "The new Calculus, which Europe lauds, is
nothing less," they suggested, "than your fluxionary method, which
Mr. Leibnitz has pirated, anticipating its tardy publication by the
genuine author. Why suffer your laurels to be wrested from you by a
stranger?" Thereupon arose the notorious _Commercium Epistolicum_,
in which Wallis, Fatio de Duillier, Collins, and Keill were
perversely active. Melancholy monument of literary and national
jealousy! Weary record of a vain strife! Ideas are no man's property.
As well pretend to ownership of light, or set up a claim to private
estate in the Holy Ghost. The Spirit blows where it lists. Truth