Madam, I Have Come From

For The Sake Of Brevity, We Will Always Represent This Number 2.718281828459... By The Letter E.

A Function Of A Variable Quantity Is An Analytic Expression Composed In Any Way Whatsoever Of The Variable Quantity And Numbers Or Constant Quantities.

If A Nonnegative Quantity Was So Small That It Is Smaller Than Any Given One, Then It Certainly Could Not Be Anything But Zero. To Those Who Ask What The Infinitely Small Quantity In Mathematics Is, We Answer That It Is Actually Zero. Hence There Are Not So Many Mysteries Hidden In This Concept As They Are Usually Believed To Be. These Supposed Mysteries Have Rendered The Calculus Of The Infinitely Small Quite Suspect To Many People. Those Doubts That Remain We Shall Thoroughly Remove In The Following Pages, Where We Shall Explain This Calculus.

Although To Penetrate Into The Intimate Mysteries Of Nature And Thence To Learn The True Causes Of Phenomena Is Not Allowed To Us, Nevertheless It Can Happen That A Certain Fictive Hypothesis May Suffice For Explaining Many Phenomena.

In The Meantime, Most Noble Sir, You Have Assigned This Question To The Geometry Of Position, But I Am Ignorant As To What This New Discipline Involves, And As To Which Types Of Problem Leibniz And Wolff Expected To See Expressed In This Way.