"The principle of the parallelogram of forces, at which Stevinus arrived and employed, (yet without expressly formulating it,) consists... of following truth. If a body A (Fig. 26) is acted by two forces whose directions coincide with the AB and AC, and whose magnitudes are proportional the lengths AB and AC, these two forces produce the same effect as a single force, which acts in the direction of the diagonal AD of the parallelogram ABCD and is proportional to that diagonal."