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 unacquainted with geometry enter here." Students in analytical geometry should know something of Descartes, and, after taking up the differential and integral calculus, they should become familiar with the parts that Newton, Leibniz, and Lagrange played in creating that science. In his historical talk it is possible for the teacher to make it plain to the student that mathematics is not a dead science, but a living one in which steady progress is made.[2]

The history of mathematics is important also as a valuable contribution to the history of civilisation. Human progress is closely identified with scientific thought. Mathematical and physical researches are a reliable record of intellectual progress. The history of mathematics is one of the large windows through which the philosophic eye looks into past ages and traces the line of intellectual development.