JB/135/002/001

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Friday even.g 9 o'clock
August 17th 1773.

Dear Sam

I have just received your letter — yr queries
in it I will do my endeavours to answer as soon as I
have an opportunity, probably tomorrow; in the meantime
I will execute a design to which your letter has revived, &
which I formed soon after your departure: it is that of
communicating to you a few considerations which I believe
will perfectly obviate your scruples about taking the description
of the parts of a mathematicalfigure from the accidental circumstancestance
of it's situation — I draw them up immediately
in a form which I will now transcribe, & which I reproach
myself much for not having transcribed & sent to you before,
as it would have put you in possession as it were, of
a very useful, perhaps even necessary expedient which perhaps
you may have been ing a good deal of time and
endeavouring to steer clear of.

"It is observable to be observed that, of the 3 sides (
(better called bounds or boundary-lines for a reason that
will appear presently) of a triangle, as such, there is no one
in particular to which the name of base more properly
belongs than to another: the sourcefrom whence that name beingis taken,
is never any other than the accidental circumstance of the
situation of the figure with respect to the reader. And from
this source the name may well be taken: since it is easy
to conceive, that whatever station a reader may find it convenient
to view the figure from, that figure in itself must
ever be [still] the same.

The purpose for which it is taken is, to distinguish
some one of the three three that one means to speak
of, fom the two others which, at the instant, one does

Identifier: | JB/135/002/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 135.
Date_1	1773-08-17	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	135	Main Headings
Folio number	002	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	correspondence	Number of Pages	2
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	[[watermarks::[britannia symbol]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public	letter 98, vol 1	ID Number	46120
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