In connection with the use of the serial form which is of course the signature of his method, it is all too tempting to say that it is always in someone's power to assume as exact a magnitude as one needs by the addition of further terms, and that the omitted terms are relatively insignificant, the result being quite in general only an approximation; it is all too tempting in order not to believe that here also Newton would have been satisfied with the same justification for omitting the higher powers which, by his method of solving equations of higher degree by approximation, arise in the given equations from the substitution of any established but still inexact value namely, on the crude ground that they are small.