Giuseppe Tartini - Lettere e documenti / Pisma in dokumenti / Letters and Documents - Volume / Knjiga / Volume II

343 LETTERS 86. Tartini to G.B. Martini Here in Padua we have the inconvenience of receiving letters from Bologna on a Saturday, and to have to write to Bologna on a Friday evening. Well, after having sent my letter, I received Your Reverence’s most kind one, and this time I guessed right. I then hear from your letter that no objections shall be raised against me if not after having completed the examination. No, absolutely not, for I mean exactly the opposite. Never proceed with the examination if the objections encountered are not overcome one by one. Not only do I not flee from them, but on the contrary I want them, and I want them to be of the most rigorous nature, nothing else mattering to me, other than their dealing with the substance and the intrinsic meaning of my proposition, without any deviation towards extrinsic and insubstantial matters. One must consider that I am treating a new kind of quantity, and in a manner which is quite new. As proficient as a man can be in the knowledge of that quantity which is known, he certainly cannot possess the same ease and learning with regard to that quantity which has hitherto been unknown to him. Therefore, it is necessary to proceed slowly, and make sure that a truth explained illuminates and clarifies the following difficulty; and this, on your part. On my part, then, I have confessed to you, and I confess again, that I possess very little knowledge of geometry. Therefore, as much as I think I know about this new kind of quantity, the piling up of many difficulties at once, expressed geometrically, can confuse me. Therefore, ex utraque parte we should indeed proceed slowly, and with order, even more so because I foresee that the explanation of many things mentioned in my letter from last Friday shall become necessary. This is my opinion (save, of course, a better judgement), while bowing to Your Reverence and to the most revered Signor Dottor Balbi with my most respectful regards, as ever I remain Your Reverence’s most humble, devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 26 November 1751 87. Tartini to G.B. Martini Towards the last days of January I received a most kind letter written by Your Reverence, in which you promised me to tackle the treatise (together with Signor Dottor Balbi) and make an examination of it. And you gave me the news of the death