★ Keep up to date with the latest news - subscribe to the Transcribe Bentham newsletter; Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
Fortunate Happy as the young Algebraist may have reason
to think himself, if perseverance has thus carried him
to the conclusion end of the first and longest of the two stages into which
the road is divided, it will have been still more fortunate
for him if at the end from and at the very place at which
by the obscure exposition he has at the very threshold of the
temple science been, as above, tormented cast into purgatory, he it has by any means
happened to him to be conducted to that other place spot, at which
light is let into the subject, and satisfaction substituted to
perplexity. True it is that drowned in a flood of algebra,
a figure of two being the same which is prefixt to the note may
after the flood has been dragged upon a close inspection be found. But in point of fact experience how
stands the business matter of reference. It is by the note itself that the
eye was conducted to the reference in the text. By that reference
it was not, nor probably ever would have been conducted to the
note.
Here belongs a practice begi begun it is believed as well as continued in Scotland,
and but too much copied in England: the throwing the
matter of elucidation to a distance from the matter to be elucidated.
The consequence is many, at the suggestion of indolence
refuse from first to last to go a hunting after the light, time after time, after in
quest of the busheled light thus proffered and at the same time hidden under a bushel: others while
groaning under a toil thus caused causelessly imposed upon
them, purchase or leave unpurchased, at the command in the humour of the
moment, the benefit light accompanied the accompaniment with which without any additional expense
to the writer, they might have been accommodated gratis
without being thus made to pay for it.
By whom has this most troublesome practice begun?
Perhaps by the historian Robertson. By what circumstance was it suggested
to him?
Identifier: | JB/018/111/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 18.
|
|||
---|---|---|---|
018 |
chrestomathia |
||
111 |
|||
001 |
|||
text sheet |
1 |
||
recto |
e7 |
||
jeremy bentham |
|||
6520 |
|||