"To suppose that so perfect a system as that of Euclid’s Elements was produced by one man, without any preceding model or materials, would be to suppose that Euclid was more than man. We ascribe to him as much as the weakness of human understanding will permit, if we suppose that the inventions in geometry, which had been made in a tract of preceding ages, were by him not only carried much further, but digested into so admirable a system, that his work obscured all that went before it, and made them be forgot and lost."
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Thomas Reid, Essay on the Powers of the Human Mind, (Edinburgh, 1812), Vol. 2, p. 368. Reported in Moritz (1914)
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Euclid’s Elements
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