certain kinds of beryl (aquamarine) and topaz, from which it may be distinguished by its specific gravity (3.1). Its hardness (7.5) is rather less than that of topaz. Euclase occurs with topaz at Boa Vista, near Ouro Preto (Villa Rica) in the province of Minas Geraes, Brazil. It is found also with topaz and chrysoberyl in the gold-bearing gravels of the R. Sanarka in the South Urals; and is met with as a rarity in the mica-schist of the Rauris in the Austrian Alps.
EUCLID [Eucleides], of Megara, founder of the Megarian
(also called the eristic or dialectic) school of philosophy, was
born c. 450 B.C., probably at Megara, though Gela in Sicily has
also been named as his birthplace (Diogenes Laërtius ii. 106),
and died in 374. He was one of the most devoted of the disciples
of Socrates. Aulus Gellius (vi. 10) states that, when a decree
was passed forbidding the Megarians to enter Athens, he regularly
visited his master by night in the disguise of a woman; and he
was one of the little band of intimate friends who listened to the
last discourse. He withdrew subsequently with a number of
fellow disciples to Megara, and it has been conjectured, though
there is no direct evidence, that this was the period of Plato’s
residence in Megara, of which indications appear in the Theaetetus.
He is said to have written six dialogues, of which only the titles
have been preserved. For his doctrine (a combination of the
principles of Parmenides and Socrates) see Megarian School.
EUCLID, Greek mathematician of the 3rd century B.C.; we
are ignorant not only of the dates of his birth and death, but also
of his parentage, his teachers, and the residence of his early years.
In some of the editions of his works he is called Megarensis, as if
he had been born at Megara in Greece, a mistake which arose
from confounding him with another Euclid, a disciple of Socrates.
Proclus (A.D. 412–485), the authority for most of our information
regarding Euclid, states in his commentary on the first book of
the Elements that Euclid lived in the time of Ptolemy I., king of
Egypt, who reigned from 323 to 285 B.C., that he was younger
than the associates of Plato, but older than Eratosthenes (276–196
B.C.) and Archimedes (287–212 B.C.). Euclid is said to have
founded the mathematical school of Alexandria, which was at
that time becoming a centre, not only of commerce, but of learning
and research, and for this service to the cause of exact science
he would have deserved commemoration, even if his writings
had not secured him a worthier title to fame. Proclus preserves
a reply made by Euclid to King Ptolemy, who asked whether he
could not learn geometry more easily than by studying the
Elements—“There is no royal road to geometry.” Pappus of
Alexandria, in his Mathematical Collection, says that Euclid was
a man of mild and inoffensive temperament, unpretending,
and kind to all genuine students of mathematics. This being
all that is known of the life and character of Euclid, it only
remains therefore to speak of his works.
Among those which have come down to us the most remarkable is the Elements (Στοιχεῖα) (see Geometry). They consist of thirteen books; two more are frequently added, but there is reason to believe that they are the work of a later mathematician, Hypsicles of Alexandria.
The question has often been mooted, to what extent Euclid, in his Elements, is a discoverer or a compiler. To this question no entirely satisfactory answer can be given, for scarcely any of the writings of earlier geometers have come down to our times. We are mainly dependent on Pappus and Proclus for the scanty notices we have of Euclid’s predecessors, and of the problems which engaged their attention; for the solution of problems, and not the discovery of theorems, would seem to have been their principal object. From these authors we learn that the property of the right-angled triangle had been found out, the principles of geometrical analysis laid down, the restriction of constructions in plane geometry to the straight line and the circle agreed upon, the doctrine of proportion, for both commensurables and incommensurables, as well as loci, plane and solid, and some of the properties of the conic sections investigated, the five regular solids (often called the Platonic bodies) and the relation between the volume of a cone or pyramid and that of its circumscribed cylinder or prism discovered. Elementary works had been written, and the famous problem of the duplication of the cube reduced to the determination of two mean proportionals between two given straight lines. Notwithstanding this amount of discovery, and all that it implied, Euclid must have made a great advance beyond his predecessors (we are told that “he arranged the discoveries of Eudoxus, perfected those of Theaetetus, and reduced to invincible demonstration many things that had previously been more loosely proved”), for his Elements supplanted all similar treatises, and, as Apollonius received the title of “the great geometer,” so Euclid has come down to later ages as “the elementator.”
For the past twenty centuries parts of the Elements, notably the first six books, have been used as an introduction to geometry. Though they are now to some extent superseded in most countries, their long retention is a proof that they were, at any rate, not unsuitable for such a purpose. They are, speaking generally, not too difficult for novices in the science; the demonstrations are rigorous, ingenious and often elegant; the mixture of problems and theorems gives perhaps some variety, and makes their study less monotonous; and, if regard be had merely to the metrical properties of space as distinguished from the graphical, hardly any cardinal geometrical truths are omitted. With these excellences are combined a good many defects, some of them inevitable to a system based on a very few axioms and postulates. Thus the arrangement of the propositions seems arbitrary; associated theorems and problems are not grouped together; the classification, in short, is imperfect. Other objections, not to mention minor blemishes, are the prolixity of the style, arising partly from a defective nomenclature, the treatment of parallels depending on an axiom which is not axiomatic, and the sparing use of superposition as a method of proof.
Of the thirty-three ancient books subservient to geometrical analysis, Pappus enumerates first the Data (Δεδομένα) of Euclid. He says it contained 90 propositions, the scope of which he describes; it now consists of 95. It is not easy to explain this discrepancy, unless we suppose that some of the propositions, as they existed in the time of Pappus, have since been split into two, or that what were once scholia have since been erected into propositions. The object of the Data is to show that when certain things—lines, angles, spaces, ratios, &c.—are given by hypothesis, certain other things are given, that is, are determinable. The book, as we are expressly told, and as we may gather from its contents, was intended for the investigation of problems; and it has been conjectured that Euclid must have extended the method of the Data to the investigation of theorems. What prompts this conjecture is the similarity between the analysis of a theorem and the method, common enough in the Elements, of reductio ad absurdum—the one setting out from the supposition that the theorem is true, the other from the supposition that it is false, thence in both cases deducing a chain of consequences which ends in a conclusion previously known to be true or false.
The Introduction to Harmony (Εἰσαγωγὴ ἁρμονική), and the Section of the Scale (Κατατομὴ κανόνος), treat of music. There is good reason for believing that one at any rate, and probably both, of these books are not by Euclid. No mention is made of them by any writer previous to Ptolemy (A.D. 140), or by Ptolemy himself, and in no ancient codex are they ascribed to Euclid.
The Phaenomena (Φαινόμενα) contains an exposition of the appearances produced by the motion attributed to the celestial sphere. Pappus, in the few remarks prefatory to his sixth book, complains of the faults, both of omission and commission, of writers on astronomy, and cites as an example of the former the second theorem of Euclid’s Phaenomena, whence, and from the interpolation of other proofs, David Gregory infers that this treatise is corrupt.
The Optics and Catoptrics (Ὀπτικά, Κατοπτρικά) are ascribed to Euclid by Proclus, and by Marinus in his preface to the Data, but no mention is made of them by Pappus. This latter circumstance, taken in connexion with the fact that two of the propositions in the sixth book of the Mathematical Collection prove the
