Excerpt from The Art of Ready Reckoning: Or, Mental and Practical Arithmetic, Reduced to a System, and Published for the Public of Canada; Being Particularly Adapted for Men of Business, as Well as for Schools

The most unthinking, as well as the most prejudiced, must be struck with the fact, that the period in which we live is extraordinary and momentous. Amongst the civilized masses of Europe, an unparalleled revolution is at work; they have awoke from that ignorance in which they' had slept for ages, and have sprung up in their new character of thinking beings, qualified to enquire and to discuss, and despising both the despotism' and the bigotry that would prohibit or impede their improvement. The intellectual spirit is moving upon the chaos of minds which ignorance and necessity have thrown into collision and confusion, and the result will be a new Creation. At no period of history has there been so great a devel opement of the human faculties as there is in our own time; and the cause of the present height of mental powers is well worthy the study of the philosopher. But a few centuries ago, a learned man was gazed at as a miracle, and ignorance was so common, that it passed unheeded; but in the present day learned men are so numerous, that only the most talented geniuses are at all conspicuous in society; and to be ignorant is to be despised. That mid night of ignorance which enveloped the human intellect has now passed away, and the bright orb of science, which at intervals sheds its feeble rays through the gloomy darkness of mental degradation, and was often extinguished by ignorance and superstition, has at length burst forth a quenchless light, and spreads its bright effulgence through nations.

Those who have encountered the tedious process of Arithmetic, and acquired a know ledge of the principles of the art, are best aware of the difficulties the student has to conquer. There is nothing so discouraging in Arithmetic, or that has tended so much to retard the progress of the learner, as that of fixing in the mind, by the common exercise of memory, those tables of cramp'd and unconnected sentences and subjects, with which the art is so much burdened. There is not, perhaps, in the whole range of our acquirements, any thing more difficult to be remembered; there is nothing in them that we can embody; they, in them selves, form no point of association that the mind can cling to; but are; as a writer happily observes, like grains of sand that have no coherence.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.