Read "History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 16" by Thomas Carlyle online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Meantime there has a fine Controversy risen, of mathematical, philosophical and at length of very miscellaneous nature, concerning that Konig-Maupertuis dissentience on the LAW OF THRIFT. Wonderful Controversy, much occupying the so-called Philosophic or Scientific world; especially the idler population that inhabit there. Upon this item of the Infinitely Little, -- which has in our time sunk into Nothing-at-all, and but for Voltaire, and the accident of his living near it, would be forgotten altogether, -- we must not enter into details; but a few words to render Voltaire's share in it intelligible will be, in the highest degree, necessary. Here, in brief form, rough and ready, are the successive stages of the Business; the origin and first stage of which have been known to us for some time past: --
"SEPTEMBER, 1750, Konig, his well-meant visit to Berlin proving so futile, had left Maupertuis in the humor we saw; -- pirouetting round his Apartment, in tempests of rage at such contradiction of sinners on his sublime Law of Thrift; and fulminating permission to Konig: 'No time to read your Paper of Contradictions; publish it in Leipzig, in Jericho; anywhere in the Earth, in Heaven, in the Other Place, where you have the opportunity! ' Konig, returning on these terms, had nothing for it but to publish his Paper; and did publish it, in the Leipzig -- Acta Eruditorum -- for March, 1751. There it stands, legible to this day: and if any of the human species should again think of reading it, I believe it will be found a reasonable, solid and decisive Paper; of steadfast, openly articulate, by no means insolent, tone; considerably modifying Maupertuis's Law of Thrift, or Minimum of Action; -- fatal to the claim of its being a 'Sublime Discovery,' or indeed, so far as TRUE, any discovery at all. [In -- Acta Eruditorum -- (Lipsiae, 1751): -- "De universali Principio AEquilibrii et Motus. " -- By no means uncivil to Maupertuis; though obliged to controvert him. For example: -- "Quoe itaque de Minima Actionis in modificationibus modum obtinente in genere proferuntur vehementer laudo; " "continent nempe facundum longeque pulcherrimum Dynamices sublimioris principium, cujus vim in difficillimis quoestionibus soepe expertus fui. " -- ] By way of finis to the Paper, there is given, what proves extremely important to us, an Excerpt from an old LETTER OF LEIBNITZ'S; which perhaps it will be better to present here IN CORPORE, as so much turned on it afterwards. Konig thus winds up: --