Publisher's Synopsis
From the EDITORIAL PREFACE.
The volume on Euclid is one of those which have heen added to the series of the World's Epoch-makers since the prospectus was issued. Although I had long cherished the desire to include the founder of what may be called the "Science of Geometry " in the series, I did not see my way at the outset to do so, first, owing to the difficulty of getting any one to undertake the subject under the limitations of space necessarily imposed; and, second, owing to the doubt I entertained whether the subject could be treated in a manner sufficiently popular to warrant its inclusion in a Series such as this.
After several conversations with my friend, Emeritus Professor Thomas Smith, D.D., LL.D., and after hearing him read some parts of the work, I felt assured that the plan of treatment proposed by Dr. Smith was not only exhaustive from a scientific point of view, but was sufficiently popular in style to win the interest and attention of the non-scientific reader.
Dr. Smith has had to encounter and overcome difficulties neither few nor small in the accomplishment of his task, and it is not the least interesting feature of this volume that it has been produced after its venerated author had reached his eighty-fifth year. In his case, however, the intellectual bow has abode in strength long after the time when it might reasonably have been expected to become relaxed.
