Elements of Geometry and Trigonometry (Classic Reprint)

The Editor, in offering to the public Dr. Brewster stranslation of Legendre sG eometry under its present form, is fully impressed with the responsibility he assumes in making alterations in a work of such deserved celebrity. In the original work, as well as in the translations of Dr. Brewster and Professor Farrar, the propositions are not enunciated in general terms, but with reference to, and by the aid of, the particular diagrams used for the demonstrations. It is believed that this departure from the method of Euclid has been generally regretted. The propositions of Geometry are general truths, and as such, should be stated in general terms, and without reference to particular figures. The method of enunciating them by the aid of particular diagrams seems to have been adopted to avoid the difiiculty which beginners experience in comprehending abstract propositions. But in avoiding this difficulty, and thus lessening, at first, the intellectual labour, the faculty of abstraction, which it is one of the primary objects of the study of Geometry to strengthen, remains, to a certain extent, unimproved.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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