Madam, I Have Come From A Country

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.

Nothing Takes Place In The World Whose Meaning Is Not That Of Some Maximum Or Minimum.

For 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.

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.