Note 17 — INTRODUCTION.

This great philosopher of antiquity, so justly entitled to celebrity for his mathematical works, flourished three hundred years before the Christian era. Care should be taken not to confound him with Euclid of Megara, who lived a century earlier. The latter, as the Abbé Barthelemi observes, being too much familiarized with the writings of Parmenides and the Elean school, had recourse to abstractions; “a method,” says the Abbé, “often dangerous, oftener unintelligible.” Just after, he adds: “The subtleties of metaphysics calling to their aid the quirks of logic, words presently took place of things, and students acquired nothing in the schools but a spirit of acrimony and contradiction.” Travels of the younger Anacharsis, vol. iii. chap. 37.