Page:First six books of the elements of Euclid 1847 Byrne.djvu/13

 All language consists of representative signs, and those signs are the best which effect their purposes with the greatest precision and dispatch. Such for all common purposes are the audible signs called words, which are still considered as audible, whether addressed immediately to the ear, or through the medium of letters to the eye. Geometrical diagrams are not signs, but the materials of geometrical science, the object of which is to show the relative quantities of their parts by a process of reasoning called Demonstration. This reasoning has been generally carried on by words, letters, and black or uncoloured diagrams; but as the use of coloured symbols, signs, and diagrams in the linear arts and sciences, renders the process of reasoning more precise, and the attainment more expeditious, they have been in this instance accordingly adopted.

Such is the expedition of this enticing mode of communicating knowledge, that the Elements of Euclid can be acquired in less than one third the time usually employed, and the retention by the memory is much more permanent; these facts have been ascertained by numerous experiments made by the inventor, and several others who have adopted his plans. The particulars of which are few and obvious; the letters annexed to points, lines, or other parts of a diagram are in fact but arbitrary names, and represent them in the demonstration; instead of these, the parts being differently coloured, are made to name themselves, for their forms in corresponding colours represent them in the demonstration.



In order to give a better idea of this system, and of the advantages gained by its adoption, let us take a right