Madam, I Have Come From A Country

Since The Fabric Of The Universe Is Most Perfect And The Work Of A Most Wise Creator, Nothing At All Takes Place In The Universe In Which Some Rule Of Maximum Or Minimum Does Not Appear ... There Is Absolutely No Doubt That Every Affect In The Universe Can Be Explained Satisfactorily From Final Causes, By The Aid Of The Method Of Maxima And Minima, As It Can Be From The Effective Causes Themselves ... Of Course, When The Effective Causes Are Too Obscure, But The Final Causes Are Readily Ascertained, The Problem Is Commonly Solved By The Indirect Method.

Notable Enough, However, Are The Controversies Over The Series 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - ... Whose Sum Was Given By Leibniz As 1/2, Although Others Disagree. ... Understanding Of This Question Is To Be Sought In The Word "sum"; This Idea, If Thus Conceived - Namely, The Sum Of A Series Is Said To Be That Quantity To Which It Is Brought Closer As More Terms Of The Series Are Taken - Has Relevance Only For Convergent Series, And We Should In General Give Up The Idea Of Sum For Divergent Series.

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.

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

Thus You See, Most Noble Sir, How This Type Of Solution To The Königsberg Bridge Problem Bears Little Relationship To Mathematics, And I Do Not Understand Why You Expect A Mathematician To Produce It, Rather Than Anyone Else, For The Solution Is Based On Reason Alone, And Its Discovery Does Not Depend On Any Mathematical Principle.