Note 233 — Chapter II · SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Arithmetic is older than geometry, and was much more advanced in Egypt, though still in the form which the Greeks called λογιστική rather than as ἀριθμητική proper. Even Plato puts Arithmetic before Geometry in the Republic in deference to the tradition. His own theory of number, however, suggested the inversion of this order which we find carried out in Euclid.