"Algebra appealed to Newton’s contemporaries... for its fecundity... [and] the... presentational qualities... In... his... Treatise on conic sections [dedication], Wallis contrasted his novel treatment of the s with the diagrammatic treatment in Apollonius’s Conics... 'neglected beyond measure' by Wallis’s contemporaries 'as though it were insurmountable and full of troublesome madness'. Wallis implied that geometers read it... superficially since they feared that it would drive them mad. He contrasted his own figures with Apollonius’s... to use 'schemata as simple as possible, lest intricate leadings of lines bring in confusion'."