The Literary World Volume 19 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ...but that I was ready to communicate the facts in respect to the same in confidence to the reviewers, to satisfy them that the numbers were not arbitrary. No one of the reviewers called on me for the proffered information, but one of them, the critic of the London Standard, in his article proceeded to discuss the origin of those numbers, and, with the letter of my publishers in his hands, declared they were arbitrary and that they could not be derived in the manner I had indicated--by multiplying a number found on the first column of page 74 by some other number. It is difficult to properly characterize such conduct, but it illustrates the spirit in which I have been met all through this controversy. Really we cannot see what Donnelly has to complain of. In his book he distinctly asserts that these root-numbers are "products" obtained by multiplying the numbers 10, 7, 11, 18 (each derived in a manner there explained), by certain figures in the first column of page 74 of the folio. He gives the "multipliers " and the "products," merely hinting at the multiplicand or multiplicands. He does not intimate that addition, subtracti"n, or division enters into the arithmetical process. The critic, therefore, naturallv endeavors to get at the other factor or factors of the "products " by using the " multipliers" as divisors; and when he finds that one of these so-called products (523) is a prime number, and that only one of the others is divisible by any of the given multipliers, he is justified in assuming that either the arithmetic or the honesty of the cipher-monger is of a dubious character. For ourself, we have all along believed that Donnelly is honest; but his new explanation of the process by which the &qu...