PREFACE

...[from my] most clement sovereign, I received a gold medal original: "nummum aureum." While literally a gold coin, in this context of royal honors, it refers to a commemorative medal of high value. of immense weight as a token of his singular favor. On one side shine the images of the King and Queen; on the other, the images of the august ancestors from whom the Queen derives her lineage are arranged in a circle, with the King occupying the center. Scarcely a quarter of the year had passed when the most clement King added a new proof of his favor: for, beyond all expectation, he elevated me to the dignity of Counselor of the Realm, granting me that place among the Professors within the body itself which befits this splendor.

The year had not yet reached its midpoint when the Most Christian King original: "Rex christianissimus," the traditional title of the King of France, at this time Louis XV. decreed for me a place in the illustrious Academy of Sciences which flourishes in Paris—a place left vacant by the death of the most illustrious Earl of Pembroke Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke, a British statesman and collector who held a prestigious foreign associate seat in the French Academy until his death in 1733.. This illustrious body, following the customary manner, had formally elected and presented me along with a certain most celebrated mathematician. Concerning this extraordinary increase in honor, the Most Reverend Man, Johann Jakob Käthen, a Lutheran Pastor at Geneva, congratulated me publicly; he is a man [renowned] not only for his eloquence but also for his solid re-