Pantometria — A Geometrical Treatize of Measuring (1591) - Page 6

The Preface to the Reader.

...and their metamorphosis adjoined by myself. For I know there are some—yes, many—who will not spare to say, as they have done by others, that it is a foolish toy, a mere curious trifle, serving to no use or commodity. Surely, I do not mean to labor greatly to attain the good opinion of such, having learned how the dispraise of the ignorant and vicious is no less a commendation than the praise of the wise and virtuous. It is a precedent infallible, from the beginning and always continuing, that ignorance envies knowledge, and vice envies virtue. Every man dislikes or extols things accordingly as they are agreeable or repugnant to his appetite.

I would rather be condemned while enjoying the company of Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius of Perga, and other geometers who wrote of the like toys and curiosities, than in publishing matter agreeable to such men's fantasies and concepts, be highly commended by them and laughed at or condemned by the learned. But however Epicurus, Midas, or others like them—given only to lucre and worldly pleasure—may choose to think of it, I have no mistrust of those who covet the understanding of matters hard and difficult. Such people desire the knowledge of things somewhat passing the reach and capacity of the common sort, in which only the nature of man surmounts the beastly kind. Or, by proof and assay in cases of like difficulty, they are able to judge for themselves; this treatise shall not be disliked but thankfully received.

As for the rest, persuasions are but vain. For as no words can add courage or make the coward valiant, so surely such two-footed moles and toads, whom destiny and nature has ordained to crawl within the earth and suck upon the muck, may not possibly by any vehement exhortation be reduced or moved to taste or favor any whit of virtue, science, or any such celestial influence.

My hope is, if any fault escapes—as in such long and intricate, tedious calculations of irrational numbers may happen to be some—the discrete and modest reader will rather, out of courtesy, amend it than with envious caviling ungratefully requite my painful travels. By this, I shall be provoked:

not only to publish the demonstrations of these and many

more strange and rare mathematical theorems,

hitherto hidden and not known to

the world,

but also to print sundry other volumes of my father’s, which he long

since compiled in the English tongue, desiring rather with plain

and profitable conclusions to store his native language and

benefit his countrymen, than by publishing in

the Latin rare and curious demonstra-

tions, to purchase fame among

strangers.

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