Such, as above described, is the aim and end of the calculus. As for its processes, every one knows that they are simply deductive. In demonstrating an algebraical theorem, or in resolving an equation, we travel from the datum to the quæsitum by pure ratiocination; in which the only premises introduced, besides the original hypotheses, are the fundamental axioms already mentioned—that things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and that the sums of equal things are equal. At each step in the demonstration or in the calculation, we apply one or other of these truths, or truths deducible from them, as, that the differences, products, etc., of equal numbers are equal.
It would be inconsistent with the scale of this work, and not necessary to its design, to carry the analysis of the truths and processes of algebra any further; which is also the less needful, as the task has been, to a very great extent, performed by other writers. Peacock’s Algebra, and Dr. Whewell’s Doctrine of Limits, are full of instruction on the subject. The profound treatises of a truly philosophical mathematician, Professor De Morgan, should be studied by every one who desires to comprehend the evidence of mathematical truths, and the meaning of the obscurer processes of the calculus, and the speculations of M. Comte, in his Cours de Philosophie Positive, on the philosophy of the higher branches of mathematics, are among the many valuable gifts for which philosophy is indebted to that eminent thinker.
§ 7. If the extreme generality, and remoteness not so much from sense as from the visual and tactual imagination, of the laws of number, renders it a somewhat difficult effort of abstraction to conceive those laws as being in reality physical truths obtained by observation; the same difficulty does not exist with regard to the laws of extension. The facts of which those laws are expressions, are of a kind peculiarly accessible to the senses, and suggesting eminently distinct images to the fancy. That geometry is a strictly physical science would doubtless have been recognized in all ages, had it not been for the illusions produced by two circumstances. One of these is the characteristic property, already noticed, of the facts of geometry, that they may be collected from our ideas or mental pictures of objects as effectually as from the objects themselves. The other is, the demonstrative character of geometrical truths; which was at one time supposed to constitute a radical distinction between them and physical truths; the latter, as resting on merely probable evidence, being deemed essentially uncertain and unprecise. The advance of knowledge has, however, made it manifest that physical science, in its better understood branches, is quite as demonstrative as geometry. The task of deducing its details from a few comparatively simple principles is found to be any thing but the impossibility it was once supposed to be; and the notion of the superior certainty of geometry is an illusion, arising from the ancient prejudice which, in that science, mistakes the ideal data from which we reason, for a peculiar class of realities, while the corresponding ideal data of any deductive physical science are recognized as what they really are, hypotheses.
Every theorem in geometry is a law of external nature, and might have been ascertained by generalizing from observation and experiment, which in this case resolve themselves into comparison and measurement. But it was found practicable, and, being practicable, was desirable, to deduce these truths by ratiocination from a small number of general laws of nature, the certainty and universality of which are obvious to the most careless observer, and which compose the first principles and ultimate premises of the science. Among these general laws must be included the same two which we have noticed as ultimate principles of the Science of Number also, and which are applicable to every description of quantity; viz., The sums of equals are equal, and Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another; the latter of which may be expressed in a manner more suggestive of the inexhaustible multitude of its consequences, by the following terms: Whatever is equal to any one of a number of equal magnitudes, is equal to any other of them. To these two must be added, in geometry, a third law of equality, namely, that lines, surfaces, or solid spaces, which can be so applied to one another as to coincide, are equal. Some writers have asserted that this law of nature is a mere verbal definition; that the expression “equal magnitudes” means nothing but magnitudes which can be so applied to one another as to coincide. But in this opinion I can not agree. The equality of two geometrical magnitudes can not differ fundamentally in its nature from the equality of two weights, two degrees of heat, or two portions of duration, to none of which would this definition of equality be suitable. None of these things can be so applied to one another as to coincide, yet we perfectly understand what we mean when we call them equal. Things are equal in magnitude, as things are equal in weight, when they are felt to be exactly similar in respect of the attribute in which we compare them: and the application of the objects to each other in the one case, like the balancing them with a pair of scales in the other, is but a mode of bringing them into a position in which our senses can recognize deficiencies of exact resemblance that would otherwise escape our notice.
Along with these three general principles or axioms, the remainder of the premises of geometry consists of the so-called definitions: that is to say, propositions asserting the real existence of the various objects therein designated, together with some one property of each. In some cases more than one property is commonly assumed, but in no case is more than one necessary. It is assumed that there are such things in nature as straight lines, and that any two of them setting out from the same point, diverge more and more without limit. This assumption (which includes and goes beyond Euclid’s axiom that two straight lines can not inclose a space) is as indispensable in geometry, and as evident, resting on as simple, familiar, and universal observation, as any of the other axioms. It is also assumed that straight lines diverge from one another in different degrees; in other words, that there are such things as angles, and that they are capable of being equal or unequal. It is assumed that there is such a thing as a circle, and that all its radii are equal; such things as ellipses, and that the sums of the focal distances are equal for every point in an ellipse; such things as parallel lines, and that those lines are everywhere equally distant.[200]
§ 8. It is a matter of more than curiosity to consider, to what peculiarity of the physical truths which are the subject of geometry, it is owing that they can all be deduced from so small a number of original premises; why it is that we can set out from only one characteristic property of each kind of phenomenon, and with that and two or three general truths relating to equality, can travel from mark to mark until we obtain a vast body of derivative truths, to all appearance extremely unlike those elementary ones.
200
Geometers have usually preferred to define parallel lines by the property of being in the same plane and never meeting. This, however, has rendered it necessary for them to assume, as an additional axiom, some other property of parallel lines; and the unsatisfactory manner in which properties for that purpose have been selected by Euclid and others has always been deemed the opprobrium of elementary geometry. Even as a verbal definition, equidistance is a fitter property to characterize parallels by, since it is the attribute really involved in the signification of the name. If to be in the same plane and never to meet were all that is meant by being parallel, we should feel no incongruity in speaking of a curve as parallel to its asymptote. The meaning of parallel lines is, lines which pursue exactly the same direction, and which, therefore, neither draw nearer nor go farther from one another; a conception suggested at once by the contemplation of nature. That the lines will never meet is of course included in the more comprehensive proposition that they are everywhere equally distant. And that any straight lines which are in the same plane and not equidistant will certainly meet, may be demonstrated in the most rigorous manner from the fundamental property of straight lines assumed in the text, viz., that if they set out from the same point, they diverge more and more without limit.