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The French Word Nuance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Eleanor Webster Bulatkin
Eleanor Webster Bulatkin*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
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Extract

There is fairly concerted agreement among Romance scholars that the word nuance had as its antecedent a verb nuer constructed on the noun nue ‘cloud,‘ which is derived from the Latin word nubes through the Vulgar Latin form *nuba. Diez (ii-c, 648), Hatzfeld and Darmesteter (s.v. Nue, Nuer), Meyer-Lübke (REW 5974), and Bloch and von Wartburg (s.v. Nue) concur in this etymology, which has been most recently summarized by Dauzat. The path of derivation which Dauzat describes is essentially as follows : 1) an archaic verb nuer, conveying the meaning of the modern verb nuancer, and now used only as a technical term, was derived, through the suggestion of the varied tints of clouds, from the noun nue (attested in the twelfth century [Littré, s.v. Nue]); 2) the verb nuer is attested in the year 1352 in the expression or nué, according to Bloch and von Wartburg, and appears in the works of d'Aubigné in the sixteenth century; 3) from the verb nuer is derived the noun nuance, which is attested in 1611 in Cotgrave; 4) the verbal form nuancer appears in the works of d'Aubigné as nuancé in the sixteenth century, and is attested in the 1701 edition of the dictionary of Furetière; and 5) the verb nuancer superseded the archaic verb nuer.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , March 1955 , pp. 244 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1955

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References

1 S.v. Nuer: “Nuer, nuancer, arch.., auj. techn. (xvie s., d'Aubigné; or nué (1352 B. [i.e., Bloch and von Wartburg]) dér. de nue, d'après les teintes variées des nuages.—Dér. : nuance (1611, Cotgrave), d'où nuancer (1701, Furetière; -cé, xvie s., d'Aubigné), qui a évincé nuer.”

2 Gamillscheg, s.v. Nuance, although admitting the possibility of a relationship with nue, offers the alternative proposal that the word nuance may represent a transformation of an OF word muance (<muer<Lat. mutare ‘to change’): “Nuance ‘Farbenabstufung’ 17 Jhdt., ist vielleicht in Anlehnung an nue ‘Wolke,’ möglicherweise aber auch unabhängig (vgl. nappe, natte, nëfle) umgebildetes afrz. muance ‘Wechsel’ ‘Variation,’ vgl. Namur muwance ‘Variation von Farben, Tönen’; dieses ist Abl. von afrz. muer ‘ändern,’ ‘wechseln’ aus lat. mütäre, s. mue; von nuance ruckgebildet ist seit dem 17. Jhdt. belegtes nuer ‘abstufen’ ‘abschattieren.’ Abl. von nue ‘Wolke,’ Diez 648; REW 5974, ist begrifflich schwierig.” Since Gamillscheg was under the impression that the word nuer was not attested until the 17th century, he could explain this verb as a back formation of the noun nuance. However, the fact that the word nuer is attested as early as 1262 renders the theory of a back formation untenable, and the preponderance of evidence in favor of the derivation from nue would in any event obviate the need for further consideration of a position in favor of muance.

3 I have not been able to locate the attestation of or nué, which Bloch and von Wartburg mention without any indication of a reference text.

4 Adam le Bossu, Le Jeu de la feuillée, ed. Ernest Langlois (Paris, 1911), p. 5.

5 Agrippa d'Aubigné, “Le Printems du Sieur d'Aubigné,” iii, xiii, in Œuvres, ed. Reaume and de Caussade (Paris, 1874), iii, 169.

6 See Agrippa d'Aubigné, Le Printemps, l'Hécatombe à Diane, ed. Bernard Cagnebin (Lille and Geneva, 1948), p. x, for data by which the ode in which this attestation occurs can be dated.

7 Jacques Amyot, Les œuvres morales et meslees de Plutarch (Paris, 1575), p. 56: “ainsi comme es muances de la game, en la musique, telle note qui est la plus basse en une octave, est la plus haute au regard d'une autre.” Before the introduction of the note “si” the term muance was used to designate a sort of modulation in the musical scale. Cf. Cotgrave, s.v. Muance: “Change, alteration; and particularly a variation, or change of notes in singing; viz. when in going either above or below the six notes Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, one of them is changed in the middle to gain ground and to knit the gradation; as if instead of Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, in ascending, one should sing Ut, re, mi, fa, re, mi, fa, sol, etc.”

8 The construction of the verb nuer on the noun nue, as well as that of nuancer on nuance' follows the pattern of immediate derivation which is of such common occurrence as to warrant no discussion.

9 It is evident to the English reader that the English meaning of nuance is practically synonymous with that of the word shade. Cf. OED, s.v. Shade: Locke, Essay on Human Understanding (1690) : “Colours, as white, red, yellow, blue; with their several Degrees or Shades and Mixtures”; Smollett, trans. Gil Blas (1749): “He put (to use the expression) different shades of consideration in the civilities he shewed”; employed in an adverbial sense with comparatives: “a shade better, less.” The tendency to express the nuance concept in the metaphor of “shade” or “shadows” is significantly general, as is apparent in the fact that the French word is used in German to supplement Schattierung, while in Russian it is equated with the word ott'enok. These words, along with the Latin adumbratio, are obviously loan translations of the Greek ‘painting in light and shade (without colors).‘ In the fact that the word nuance had its semantic origin in the idea “cloud” it is suggested that in the French development we are treating with a variation on the theme of the semantic family stemming from the “shade” metaphor, a variation, echoed in the Italian equivalent sfumatura originating in the idea “smoke,” which suggests a general expansion of the European “shade-shadow” semantic group to embrace vaporous and amorphous substances in general. A separate study of the word sfumatura is now in preparation. (For a general survey of research on color phenomena in relation to literature and language see Sigmund Skard, “The Use of Color in Literature,” Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc, xc, iii [1946], 163–249.)

10 La Tapisserie (Paris, 1882), pp. 353–355: “Le travail le plus difficile … consiste dans le passage d'un ton à un autre, dans la transition des lumières aux ombres. Le haute lissier se sert, à cet effet, de couleurs moyennes qu'il dispose en forme de hachures, de manière à éviter l'effet de mosaïque qui résulterait d'une simple juxtaposition (on sait combien cet effet est désagréable dans les broderies au petit point, par exemple). Supposons un espace de quinze fils à colorer par ce système: la couleur A fera une duite d'un bout à l'autre, puis une seconde sur dix fils, enfin une troisième sur cinq fils seulement; la couleur B, à son tour, fera une duite de quinze fils sur toute la longueur, une de dix fils là où la couleur B [sic: should be A] en a fait cinq, une de cinq là où celle-ci en a fait dix. Grace à cette sorte de pénétration réciproque, on arrive à lier, à fondre les tons, au point de cacher du moins à un œil peu exercé, l'endroit où commence l'un ou finit l'autre. Les anciens tapissiers n'employaient que des hachures à une nuance, et, en vérité, c'était là une resource plus que suffisante. Le système des hachures à deux nuances, inventé sous le premier Empire par Deyrolle, est aujourd'hui seul en honneur; il sert à donner plus de vibration aux tons intermédiaires.”

11 Raynaud ed. (Paris, 1899), xi, 44. (And they had, by towns and by castles, similar uniforms for recognizing one another: one company, surcoats fessed with yellow and blue; another with a bend of black on a red surcoat; another chevronned with white on a blue surcoat; another paleted with green and blue; another waved with white and red; another clouded with green and yellow; another lozenged with blue and red; another with one fess chequed with white and black; another quartered with white and red; another all blue with one quarter red; another divided horizontally with red above and white beneath.)

12 John Woodward and George Burnette, A Treatise on Heraldry: British and Foreign (London, 1892), p. 32: “We may therefore regard the latter half of the twelfth century as the earliest period to which we can trace the use of arms in the proper sense. Early in the thirteenth century the practice began of embroidering the family ensigns on the surcoat worn over the hauberk or coat of mail, whence originated the expression ‘coat of arms’.” Cf. Encyclopœdia Britannica, s.v. “Heraldry”: “Although it is probable that armorial bearings have their first place upon the shield, the charges of the shield are found displayed on the knight's long surcoat, his ‘coat of arms’ …”

13 The Booh containing the Treatise of Hawking; Hunting; Coat-Armour; Fishing and Blasting of Arms, facsimile ed. (London, 1810).

14 Facsimile ed. William Blades (London, 1901), sig. d iiij. The version of the 1496 printing is to be found on sig. b iiij.

15 For the extension of the meaning of the word nebula from its original sense ‘a mist’ to designate ‘a cloud’ see Harpers' Latin Dictionary, s.v. Nebula: “mist, vapor, fog, smoke, exhalation. … Poet., of the clouds: nebulae pluvique rores … Transf., a foggy mist, a vapor, cloud: pluveris nebula …” (See also note 50 below.) The “bold ‘wavy’ ” line, to which, according to the Britannica, the term “nebuly” is misapplied, is also a convoluted line with two bulges arranged on the sides of the convolutions in a manner which suggests waves about to break. It could easily have been taken for a simplification of the old clouded line, and is in fact designated in French both as nebulé and nuagé and in German doppelte Wolken, Spanish and Italian nebuloso (G. B. Riestap, Armoiries des familles contenues dans l'Armoriai Général, Paris, 1903). The confusion of these two devices and of the terms used to indicate them may be explained in the following manner: Apparently there were two designations for the old clouded line: the one a learned word derived directly from the Latin word nebulatus in its late meaning ‘clouded,‘ which produced the French nebulé and thence the English nebuly; and the other a popular word derived from the French noun nue as the participial adjective nué (cf. Eng. cloudy < cloud). Then two events occurred which created the confusion: 1) the old clouded line was simplified into the bold wavy line, and 2) the French noun nue was replaced in common usage by the neologism nuage (first attested in 1564 in the Latin-French dictionary of Thierry). Thus as the old clouded line evolved into the bold wavy line, the verb nuer was being replaced by nuager and the bold wavy line came to be called nuagé (cf. Furetière, Dictionnaire universel, ed. 1691 : “Nuagé. Terme de Blazon. Il se dit des pièces qui sont representées avec des ondes ou sinuosités.”) Apparently the old clouded line, along with the term nué by which it was designated, dropped from use entirely. On the learned level, the Latinism “nebuly” (nebulé), which remained stable, was simply transferred from the old clouded line to the bold wavy Une. The result was, then, that while the old Une had been termed nebulé and nué, the new line was designated nebulé and nuagé.

16 For illuminations see Henry Martin, La miniature française du XIIIe au XVe siècle (Paris, Brussels, 1923), Fig. iii and iv (about 1256), xxviii (1311), et passim. For tapestries see, e.g., Les tapisseries de l'Apocalypse de la cathédrale d'Angers (Paris, 1942), passim. These tapestries were made between the years 1375 and 1384.

17 Cf. Müntz, p. 100: “Mais le rôle des tapisseries ne se borne pas à la décoration des intérieurs; comme dans l'antiquité, elles interviennent partout où l'on célèbre une fête, sur les places publiques, dans l'enceint des tournois, dans les camps. … Puis viennent les bannières qui flottent au milieu des cortèges religieux et militaires, les housses de chevaux aux riches armoiries, les tentes d'écarlate, brodées de riches œuvres, telles que celle que saint Louis envoya, en 1248, au kahn des Tartares, et qui contenait l'Adoration des Mages et des Scènes de la Passion. Les applications des tapisseries deviennent si nombreuses et si variées que l'on finit par donner à celles-ci des noms particuliers, selon la place qui leur était assignée.”

18 Cf. the Spanish expression oro matizado of the same meaning: Lorenço de Zamora, Monarchía mystica de la yglesia (Madrid, 1611), ii, 92: “los reyes … con sus resplandores parecen vestidos de oro matizado …” and p. 247: “las vestiduras sembradas de pedreria, de puntàs, de esmeraldas y camafeos, por las orlas y guarniciones, labores de oro matiçado.

19 Cited by Havard as of 1547 from Ordre observé au sacre et couronnement du roi Henri II (as of 1547) and from Isle des hermaphrodites (attributed to 16th century).

20 Marguerite de Valois, Les Memoires de la roine Marguerite (Paris, 1628), p. 175. Cited by Godefroy and attributed to 1598.

21 Cited by Havard from Le Mercure Galant (May 1687) and from Inventaire du chevalier de Piré (attributed to 1719).

22 Fables, in Œuvres, ed. Regnier (Paris, 1883), i, 182.

23 Cited by Havard from Inventaire des biens trouvés en l'Hôtel de Quatremares (as of 1334) and from Inventaire de l'abbé de Effiat (as of 1698).

24 Adam le Bossu de la Halle, Le Jeu de la feuillée, ed. Ernest Langlois (Paris, 1911), p. 5.

25 Müntz, p. 109: “L'élevation au trône impérial du comte Baudouin de Flandre (1204) pourrait bien avoir contribué à familiariser les Flamands avec cet art de la haute lisse, que nous savons n'avoir jamais cessé de fleurir en Orient … Les tentures byzantines rapportées dans les Pays Bas ont pu servir de modèles pour ces ‘draps d'or imagiés’ qui devaient bientôt prendre un brillant essor; il est également possible que les artistes flamands soient allés à Constantinople pour découvrir les secrets de cette industrie, ou encore qu'ils les aient appris d'artistes byzantins envoyés par les nouveaux empereurs dans leur pays natal.”

26 Havard, s.v. Arras: “On désigna longtemps sous le nom d'Arrazzi les tapisseries d'Arras qui, chronologiquement, sont des premières qui aient été faites en Occident.”

27 See Müntz, Ch. xii, pp. 247–288, for the history of tapestry weaving in France during this period.

28 Alfred Darcel and Jules Guiffrey ed. (Paris, 1882), pp. 16–17.

29 Cf. the 1691 edition of the dictionary of Furetière, s.v. Nuance: “Chez les Teinturiers on doit teindre tous les deux ans pour échantillon deux livres de soye de seize sortes de nuances en Cramoisi, quatre rouges, quatre écarlattes, quatre violettes, et quatre cannelées.” According to the dictionary of Havard (s.v. Nuance) this regulation is to be found among Les Statuts et Réglements de la Corporation des Teinturiers. Havard does not mention the date of the statute, but since he customarily gives attestations in chronological order, and since this precedes an attestation of 1658, it is to be presumed that it appertains to the first half of the 17th century.

30 Müntz, p. 353 : “On jugera de la minutie qu'exige la haute lisse—une passée ne porte souvent que sur deux ou trois fils de chaine,—en se rappelant qu'aux Gobelins un haute lissier ne produit en moyenne que 28 centimètres carrés par jour, soit un peu plus de 8/10 de mètre carré par année de 300 jours de travail.”

31 That its usage with reference to this art persisted, however, is evident from 18th-century attestations such as one appearing in a 1718 report on the tapestries of the workshop established by the famous Flemish weaver, de la Planche (M. Delville, Recueil de statuts et de documents relatifs à la corporation des tapissiers, de 1258 à 1875, Paris, 1875, p. 111): “son goût dans les nuances était tendre et de durée, le coloris, fort beau, imitait beaucoup les carnations de Raphaël et de Rubens; ses draperies artistement nuancées, d'un travail naturel et d'une belle ordonnance.” See also Littré's citation of Madame Riccoboni, Lettres d'Elizabethe-Sophie de Vallière d Louise-Hortence de Cantelau son amie (Paris, 1775), p. 88: “Après le diner, je vais dans une grande galerie pour y diriger l'ouvrage de plusieurs jeunes filles peu habiles à mêler leur nuances.”

32 Garnier Frères ed. (Paris, n.d.), p. 16.

33 Number for 30 March 1658, as cited by Havard.

34 Cf. Verlaine's famous passage in his “Art poétique”:

Car nous voulons la Nuance encor,
Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance!
Oh! la nuance seule fiance
Le rêve au rêve et la flûte au cor!

35 In an article, “The Spanish word matiz …,” to appear in Vol. x of Traditio, I discuss at some length the Renaissance usage of the words émailler and diaprer as expressions paralleling the word matizar to denote embellishment with brilliant variegated colors. It is significant also that in French heraldic terminology the “colours” are called émaux. Those most commonly encountered in French and British arms are: azur ‘azure,’ gueules red or ‘gules,’ sinople green or ‘vert,’ and sable black or ‘sable.’

36 Further examples of the usage of the words nuance and nuancer in context having to do with color phenomena in general are: Jean François Saint-Lambert, Les Saisons: l'Automne (Paris, 1795), p. 116 (cited by Littré) : “Les couleurs d'un beau soir où son œil incertain / Cherche, sans la trouver la première nuance / Du pourpre qui finit, de l'azure qui commence”; Jacques Delille, l'Imagination, iii, in Œuvres (Paris, 1817), ii, 171 (cited by Littré) : “Ainsi le peintre unit de nuance en nuance / La teinte qui finit à celle qui commence”; Buffon, Oiseaux, xii, p. 90, as cited by Littré: “la description des couleurs [d'un oiseau] sera courte; c'est un noir à peine nuancé de quelques reflets violets sur tout le corps.”

37 This was not always the case, however, especially during the 16th century. See Müntz, p. 188: “Les lumières ne doivent être qu'exceptionellement de la couleur de l'ombre; le jaune y dominera, surtout dans les feuillages et dans les fleurs, de façon à imprimer un certain cachet d'unité à l'ensemble. Les lumières qui ne sont pas jaunes seront généralement décolorées; les demi-teints n'étant, pour ainsi dire qu'une extension plus temperée de la lumière, c'est par l'ombre que les objets recevront leur couleur.”

38 The same conception is to be observed in his understanding of another neologism which this word family produced, the word nuage, which seems to have conveyed for a time the meaning of the word nuance. The word nuage is first attested in the dictionary of Thierry in 1564, and eventually came to supplant in general usage its antecedents nue and nuée in the meaning ‘a cloud.’ Shortly after its inception, this word seems to have also been used as a term of painting, for in the year 1573 the expression “Nuage en Peincture” appears in the dictionary of Nicot, where it is defined: “La représentation de l'air et des nues.” Cotgrave seems to have conceived the word to mean ‘the representation of shadows,’ for he defines it: “a shadowing (with darke colours upon lighter of the same kind; for if it be with colours of another kind, it is not termed Nuage, but Mutation, or, Changement).’ Apparently the feeling among lexicographers that the word nuage conveyed the meaning ”a shadowing“ persisted through the first half of the 17th century. Thus the dictionary of Monet of 1636 contains the entry: ”Nuage en peinture, Ombrage: … Picturae umbra. Colorum umbrae. Inumbrantes pictura colores. Picturae opaca, et obscura. Nuage en tapisserie, Ombrage: Textilis picturae umbra. Tapetiorum umbrae. Inustae tapetibus textili colore umbrae.“ Monet then defines the word nuance ”Nuage de tapisserie.“ In similar vein the dictionary of Nathanael Duez contains the entry ”Nuance, ou Nuage de tapisserie et de peinture, ombre e nuvole di pittura e di tapezzarie.“ It seems, however, that the usage of the word nuage as a color term was discontinued after the middle of the century, for there is no mention of the word in this sense in the dictionary of Richelet of 1680, or in any of the dictionaries which came out shortly thereafter.

It is to be noted that, according to Cotgrave, when the type of shading designated nuage is performed on colors of “another kind” (i.e., the different hues of colors), it is not termed “nuage” but “mutation,” or “changement.” This distinction seems to have been revived by lexicographers from time to time, and may be responsible for the present-day theory of the Larousse and of Gamillscheg (see n. 2 above) which presumes a connection between the word nuance and the family of words stemming from the verb muer ‘to change’ (<Lat. mutare). Ménage, in his etymological dictionary of 1750, reiterates the opinion that the words mutation and changement express the gradation of the hues of colors, and maintains that it originated with Nicot, although I have not observed any mention of it in Nicot's dictionary of 1573. Ménage explains the theory as follows: “Nuance. Nicot au mot nuage. Nuage se prend aussi pour l'ombrage de brun sur clair d'une mesme couleur, que les tapissiers donnent en leurs ouvrages, commençans du plus brun et finissans au plus clair; comme quand ils couchent de 4. ou 5. façons de couleur verde queu à queu l'une de l'autre; car l'obscure fait nuée à la gaye, et la moins gaye à la plus gaye. Car si c'est de diverses couleurs que le tapissier fasse assemblance, quoyqu'il y ait ombrage entr'elles, si n'est-il plus appelle nuage, ains mutation ou changement. On l'appelle aussi nuance, obumbratio, inumbratio.” Actually I have not been able to find any attestation of the words mutation or changement in the meaning ascribed to them by Cotgrave and Nicot. Furthermore, as has been shown, the limitation which Cotgrave imposes on the meaning of the word nuance which would justify the usage of these terms simply did not exist in practice.

39 La Pratique du Théâtre, ed. Pierre Martino (Paris, 1927), iv, vii, 343.

40 Charles H. Boudhors ed. (Paris 1930), p. 17.

41 “Lettre d'Argental,” 8 Sept. 1754, in Œuvres (Paris, 1878), xxxviii, 256. Other examples of the usage of the word nuance to designate gradations of meaning in language are: Madame de Sévigné, Lettres, 28 Feb. 1680, ed. Monmerqué (Paris, 1862), vi, 287: “Elle [the future Dauphine] a écrit à monsieur le Dauphin [son of Louis XIV] avec des nuances de style, selon qu'elle a été près d'être sa femme, qui ont marqué bien de l'esprit“; Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs …, xi, 23: ”Mais par quelle sagacité avons-nous pu marquer les différences des temps? Comment aurons-nous pu exprimer les nuances je voudrais, j'aurais voulu; les choses positives, les choses conditionnelles?“

42 Œuvres (Paris, 1787), v, 339.

43 Œuvres, ed. O'Connor and Arago (Paris, 1847–49), ii, 482. A similar usage is to be observed in a passage from Mademoiselle de Maupin of Gautier, ed. Charpentier (Paris, 1883), p. 232 : “Ceux mêmes [jeunes hommes] qui avait l'air le plus humble et le plus soumis redressaient la tête avec une nuance très-sensible de révolte et d'ennui.”

44 Œuvres, ed. Flourens (Paris, 1853), vi, 514; cited by Littré.

45 Charles H. Boudhors ed. (Paris, 1930), v, 74.

46 Gaston Cayrou ed. (Paris, 1913), xii, xxviii, 454.

47 Eléments, as cited by Littré.

48 Essai sur Claude et sur Néron, in Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1875), iii, 102.

49 Estetica (Milan, 1904), “Storia,” Ch. iii and iv, pp. 189–222, et passim.

50 Erwin Panofsky, “ ‘Nebulae in pariete’: Notes on Erasmus' Eulogy on Durer,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xiv (1951), 34–41, shows that Erasmus' image “Clouds upon a wall” is a reference to a similar figure used by the late antique poet Ausonius (ca. a.d. 310–395). Ausonius prefaces his best known poem “Cupido cruciatur” with a letter to his son in which he explains that the poem was inspired by a wall painting seen in the house of a friend, and compares the poem itself with “a cloud painted upon a wall,” or, as Panofsky says, “the unsubstantial image of an unsubstantial object”: “En umquam vidisti nebulam pictam in pariete? Vidisti utique et meministi.” With reference to the discussion of this passage in Panofsky's article, Leo Spitzer, “Garcilaso, Third Eclogue, Lines 265–271,” HR, xx (1952), 245, n. 1, remarks that in his opinion Ausonius' usage of the word nebula “represents the first attestation of the semantic transfer ‘cloud’> ‘shade (of color)’ as present in Fr. nuance. …” It could in fact be said that the metaphor which Ausonius employs bridges in one image the much more extensive semantic evolution “cloud”> “intangible quantity which is cognizable but not subject to rational analysis,” manifested in the 17th-century usage of the word nuance under discussion. Ausonius' metaphor is, of course, not strictly within the historical continuity of the nuance development. It is rather one of those products of poetic sensitivity whose source exists in the eternal realm of potential ideas, which frequently adumbrate or are echoed in the linguistic phenomena of a specific cultural milieu, often far removed in time and space.

51 La Monadologie (1714), in. Opera Philosophica, ed. Erdmann (Berlin, 1840), p. 706-a: “Car tout changement naturel se faisant par dégrés, quelque chose change et quelque chose reste: et par conséquent il faut que dans la substance simple il y ait une pluralité d'affections et de rapports quoi qu'il n'y en ait point de parties”; Réplique aux Réflexions de Bayle (1702), p. 187-b: “Et quoique dans la nature il ne se trouve jamais de changemens parfaitement uniforme, tels que demande l'idée que les Mathématiques nous donnent du mouvement … néanmoins les phénomenes actuels de la nature sont ménagés, et doivent l'être de telle sorte, qu'il ne se rencontre jamais rien où la loi de continuité … et toutes les autres règles les plus exactes, des mathématiques, soient violées”; and also Extrait d'une lettre à M. Bayle (1687), pp. 104 and 105-a: “Il [un certain principe de l'ordre général] a son origine de l'infinité; il est absolument nécessaire dans la Géométrie, mais il réussit encore dans la Physique, parce que la souveraine sagesse, qui est la source de toutes choses, agit en parfait Géomètre, et suivant une harmonie à laquelle rien ne peut ajouter … On le peut énoncer ainsi: … Lorsque les cas (ou ce qui est donné) s'approchent continuellement, et se perdent enfin l'un dans l'autre, il faut que les suites ou évenemens (ou ce qui est demandé) le fassent aussi … le repos peut être considéré comme une vitesse infiniment petite, ou comme une tardité infinie.”

52 La Palingénésie philosophique, xv, 5, in Œuvres d'histoire naturelle (Paris, 1782), vii, 402.