Page:Carroll - Euclid and His Modern Rivals.djvu/131

.] . It may be prejudice, but I cannot help thinking that Euclid's plan—of first clearly stating what he is going to prove and then proving it—is to be preferred to this conjurer's trick of 'forcing a card.'

The book is, I think, very hard for beginners to master: the majority of the new Theorems are much more fitted for 'exercises,' than to be embodied in a text-book: and, to crown all, the ambitious attempt to construct a proof of Playfair's Axiom is, as we have seen, a lamentable failure.

I think I cannot better conclude my review of this book than by giving you, in two parallel columns, Euclid's Props. I. 18, 19, and Mr. Henrici's proposed substitute for them, at p. 107.

(turn over.)