Page:Essays on the active powers of the human mind; An inquiry into the human mind on the principles of common sense; and An essay on quantity.djvu/619

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AN ESSAY ON QUANTITY

that seem directly contrary to those of the other. Thereupon, a serious controversy is begun, whether centripetal force be as the velocity, or as the velocity and quantity of matter taken together. Much mathematical and experimental dust is raised; and yet neither party can ever be brought to yield; for they are both in the right, only they have been unlucky in giving the same name to different mathematical conceptions. Had they distinguished these measures of centripetal force as Newton has done, calling the one "vis centripetæ quantitatis acceleratrix," the other, "quantitas motrix," all appearance of contradiction had ceased, and their propositions, which seem so contrary, had exactly tallied.


FINIS.


Tyler & Reed, Printers, Bolt-court, London.