Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/185

Rh But in the preface there is an historical paragraph which I will quote, as it may be a means of tracing the use of these figures before he published what he styles the Ground of Arts. "If (he writes) any man object that other books have been written of Arithmetick already so sufficient that I needed not now to put pen to the book, except I will condemn other men's writings: to them I answer, that as I condemn no man's diligence, so I know that no one man can satisfie every man: and therefore, like as many doe esteeme greatly other bookes, so I doubt not but some will like this my booke above any other English Arithmetick hitherto written; and namely, such as shall lack instructors, for whose sake I have so plainly set forth the examples, as no booke that I have seen hath done hitherto, which thing shall be great ease to the rude readers." The last article of inquiry, therefore, shall be after those writings or books (it is not clear from the passage cited whether they were in manuscript or print) to which Record alludes. And I think it is not a strained inference from this treatise of a great arithmetician, that in his days the Arabian numerals could not have been in very common use, when the master found it requisite to explain to his scholar in such an heterogeneous method the force, value, and utility, of these now vulgar figures.

Mortifying is it as well as astonishing to observe the slow progress formerly made in acquiring a science, a proficiency in which is now so easily obtained; for a stripling at a school in a country village can now by the help of these figures in a few minutes work a sum, that the eminent Roger Bacon could not have reckoned perhaps in a whole day with Roman capitals. And such being the benefit that has accrued to people of every degree and station in society by this admirable discovery, much is it to be regretted that neither the sagacious inventors, or Indians or Arabians, nor the introducers of it into England or Europe, should be known,