He was much 1 Orator, § 212 " cursum contentiones magis requirunt, expositiones rerum tarditatem."
Non invideo equidem, miror magis, was Johnson's good-natured remark, when he was taken over his friend's fine house and pleasant gardens.
The theoretical assumptions of Newton and Euler (hypotheses magis mathematicae quam naturales) of a resistance varying as some simple power of the velocity, for instance, as the square or cube of the velocity (the quadratic or cubic law), lead to results of great analytical complexity, and are useful only for provisional extrapolation at high or low velocity, pending further experiment.
In an " Adm onitio " on the seventh page Napier states that, although in that place the mode of construction should be explained, he proceeds at once to the use of the logarithms, " ut praelibatis prius usu, et rei utilitate, caetera aut magis placeant posthac edenda, aut minus saltem displiceant silentio sepulta."
