Euclid’s Elements

"Now in the discovery of lemmas the best aid is a mental aptitude for it. For we may see many who are quick at solutions and yet do not work by method; thus Cratistus in our time was able to obtain the required result from first principles, and those the fewest possible, but it was his natural gift which helped him to the discovery."

"If a straight line [AB] be bisected and a straight line [BD] be added to it in a straight line, the rectangle contained by the whole [AD]... and the added straight line [BD] together with the square on the half [CB] is equal to the square on the straight line [CD] made up of the half and the added straight line. For let a straight line AB be bisected at the point C, and let a straight line BD be added to it in a straight line; I say that the rectangle contained by AD, DB together with the square on CB is equal to the square on CD. For let the square CEFD be described on CD, and let DE be joined; through the point B let BG be drawn parallel to either EC or DF, through the point H let KM be drawn parallel to either AB or EF, and further through A let AK be drawn parallel to either CL or DM. Then, since AC is equal to CB, AL is also equal to CH. But CH is equal to HF. Therefore AL is also equal to HF. Let CM be added to each; therefore the whole AM is equal to the gnomon NOP. But AM is the rectangle AD, DB, for DM is equal to DB; therefore the gnomon NOP is also equal to the rectangle AD, DB. Let LG, which is equal to the square on BC, be added to each; therefore the rectangle contained by AD, DB together with the square on CB is equal to the square on CD."

"Euclid is a Platonist by persuasion and intimate with this system of philosophy, and so he has set before himself as goal of his system of Elements the constitution of the Platonic figures, as they are called."

"1. Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another. 2. If equals be added to equals, the wholes are equal. 3. If equals be subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal. 4. Things which coincide with one another are equal to one another. 5. The whole is greater than the part."

"In right angled triangles the square on the side subtending the right angle is equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle."

"To suppose that so perfect a system as that of Euclid’s Elements was produced by one man, without any preceding model or materials, would be to suppose that Euclid was more than man. We ascribe to him as much as the weakness of human understanding will permit, if we suppose that the inventions in geometry, which had been made in a tract of preceding ages, were by him not only carried much further, but digested into so admirable a system, that his work obscured all that went before it, and made them be forgot and lost."

"To cut a given straight line so that the rectangle contained by the whole and one of the segments is equal to the square on the remaining segment. Let AB be the given straight line; thus it is required to cut AB so that the rectangle contained by the whole and one of the segments is equal to the square on the remaining segment. For let the square ABDC be described on AB; let AC be bisected at the point E, and let BE be joined; let CA be drawn through to F, and let EF be made equal to BE; let the square FH be described on AF, and let GH be drawn through to K. I say that AB has been cut at H so as to make the rectangle contained by AB, BH equal to the square on AH. For, since the straight line AC has been bisected at E, and FA is added to it, the rectangle contained by CF, FA together with the square on AE is equal to the square on EF. [Bk II. Prop 6] But EF is equal to EB; therefore the rectangle CF, FA together with the square on AE is equal to the square on EB. But the squares on BA, AE are equal to the square on EB, for the angle at A is right [Bk I. Prop 47, Pythagorean theorem]; therefore the rectangle CF, FA together with the square on AE is equal to the squares on BA, AE. Let the square on AE be subtracted from each; therefore the rectangle CF, FA which remains is equal to the square on AB. Now the rectangle CF, FA is FK, for AF is equal to FG; and the square on AB is AD; therefore FK is equal to AD. Let AK be subtracted from each; therefore FH which remains is equal to HD. And HD is the rectangle AB, BH for AB is equal to BD; and FH is the square on AH; therefore the rectangle contained by AB, BH is equal to the square on HA. therefore the given straight line AB has been cut at H so as to make the rectangle contained by AB, BH equal to the square on HA."

"That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles."

"Two unequal magnitudes being set out, if from the greater there be subtracted a magnitude greater than its half, and from that which is left a magnitude greater than its half, and if this process be repeated continually, there will be left some magnitude which will be less than the lesser magnitude set out."

"Out of the pictures which are all that we can really see, we imagine a world of solid things; and... this world is constructed so as to fullfil a certain code of rules, some called axioms, and some called definitions, and some called postulates, and some assumed in the course of demonstration, but all laid down in one form or another in Euclid’s Elements of Geometry. ...This book has been for nearly twenty-two centuries the encouragement and guide of that scientific thought which is one... with the progress of man from a worse to a better state. The encouragement; for it contained a body of knowledge that was really known and could be relied on, and that moreover was growing in extent and application. For even at the time this book was written—shortly after the foundation of the Alexandrian Museum—Mathematic was no longer the merely ideal science of the Platonic school, but had started on her career of conquest over the whole world of Phenomena. The guide; for the aim of every scientific student of every subject was to bring his knowledge of that subject into a form as perfect as that which geometry had attained. Far up on the great mountain of Truth, which all the sciences hope to scale, the foremost of that sacred sisterhood was seen, beckoning for the rest to follow her. And hence she was called, in the dialect of the Pythagoreans, “the purifier of the reasonable soul.” Being thus in itself at once the inspiration and the aspiration of scientific thought, this book of Euclid has had a history as chequered as that of human progress itself."

"The “elements” of the Great Alexandrian remain for all time the first, and one may venture to assert, the only perfect model of logical exactness of principles, and of rigorous development of theorems. If one would see how a science can be constructed and developed to its minutest details from a very small number of intuitively perceived axioms, postulates, and plain definitions, by means of rigorous, one would almost say chaste, syllogism, which nowhere makes use of surreptitious or foreign aids, if one would see how a science may thus be constructed one must turn to the elements of Euclid."

"Had the early Greek mind been sympathetic to the algebra and arithmetic of the Babylonians, it would have found plenty to exercise its logical acumen, and might easily have produced a masterpiece of the deductive reasoning it worshipped logically sounder than Euclids greatly overrated Elements. The hypotheses of elementary algebra are fewer and simpler than those of synthetic geometry. ...they could have developed it with any degree of logical rigor they desired. Had they done so, Apollonius would have been Descartes, and Archimedes, Newton. As it was, the very perfection... of Greek geometry retarded progress for centuries."