PREFACE

Summary

This book is a sequel to a treatise on Statics published a little more than a year ago, and has a similar scope. To avoid repetitions, numerous references to the former volume are made.

A writer who undertakes to explain the elements of Dynamics has the choice, either to follow one or other of the traditional methods which, however effectual from a practical point of view, are open to criticism on logical grounds, or else to adopt a treatment so abstract that it is likely to bewilder rather than to assist the student who looks to learn something about the behaviour of actual bodies which he can see and handle. There is no doubt as to which is the proper course in a work like the present; and I have not hesitated to follow the method adopted by Maxwell, in his Matter and Motion, which forms, I think, the best elementary introduction to the ‘absolute’ system of Dynamics. Some account of the more abstract, if more logical, way of looking at dynamical questions is, however, given in its proper place, which is at the end, rather than at the beginning of the book.