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Special pages :
Letter to Karl Marx, November 21, 1882
Source: Marx’s Mathematical Manuscripts, New Park Publications, 1983;
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 46
To Marx in Ventnor
London, November 21, 1882[edit source]
Dear Mohr,
I was on the point of asking you how your reserves stood when your letter arrived today. Encl. CHEQUE for £ 30 which you will be able to cash in the usual way. That being so, you will get t he money on Monday, possibly even on Saturday or, if you’re prepared to lay out 1/-on a telegram, as early as Friday.
Enclosed a mathematical essay by Moore. The conclusion that ‘the algebraic method is only the differential method disguised’ refers of course only to his own method of geometrical construction and is pretty correct there, too. I have written to him that you place no value on the way the thing is represented in geometrical construction, the application to the equations of curves being quite enough. Further, the fundamental difference between your method and the old one is that you make x change to x', thus making them really vary, while the other way starts from x + h, which is always only the sum of two magnitudes, but never the variation of a magnitude. Your x therefore, even when it has passed through x’ and again becomes the first x, is still other than it was; while x remains fixed the whole time, if h is first added to it and then taken away again. However, every graphical representation of the variation is necessarily the representation of the completed process, of the result, hence of a quantity which became constant, the line x; its supplement is represented as x + h, two pieces of a line. From this it already follows that a graphical representation of how x', and then again becomes x, is impossible.
Further, 2., a letter from Bernstein which has just arrived and which I should like to have back.
(I was interrupted by Pumps and the baby[1] so shall have to get a move on with this letter as I have persuaded myself that it must go off at 5.30.)
I don’t know whether I ought not to fire a broadside or two at Vollmar for his doctoring of history à la Malon. His suppression of the Marseilles Congress is carrying the falsification of history a bit too far. If Bernstein fails to raise this in the notes on the final article, it will have to be put right.
I shall send you the Egalité as soon as I have read it. As usual, a letter Lafargue promised to write has not yet arrived. His public reply to the examining magistrate, in which he came the professor, was a childish affair. These people are acting as though they were absolutely intent on being arrested. Fortunately the government is pretty rocky, so it’s possible that they will still get away with it. Tussy and Johnny arrived ALL RIGHT yesterday.
Your
F.E.
- ↑ Lilian Rosher