54 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1831. tains an article on Life Assurance, the first of a series of 

 twenty-five articles contributed annually by Mr. De Morgan 

 to this work. 



In this year the e Elements of Arithmetic ' was first 

 published. The author's old pupil, Mr. Richard Hutton, 

 says of this book : 



Elements 'The publication of his " Arithmetic," a book which 

 has not unnaturally been more useful to masters than to 

 scholars, began a new era in the history of elementary 

 teaching in England ; devoting, as all his books did, far 

 more space and labour to the logical processes by which the 

 various rules are demonstrated than to the more technical 

 parts of the subject, though of these too, in their proper 

 place, the writer was never unmindful, spending the 

 greatest care on teaching the art of rapid and accurate 

 computation, no less than of the true science of number. 

 His exposition of the theory of limits, from the earliest 

 stage at which it entered into algebraical conception, was 

 so masterly and exhaustive, that it haunted his pupils in 

 the logical tangle of their later lives, and helped many a 

 man .through the puzzle of Dr. Mansel's conundrum- 

 making as to * the Infinite,' in his ' Limits of Eeligious 

 Thought.' l 



These few lines indicate the place which this book, an 

 early fruit of his own methods of reasoning, held in rela- 

 tion to the later writings, and show how, in his most 

 elementary teaching, he laid the foundation of principles' 

 which were afterwards fully developed, and which fur- 

 nished a guide to thought on subjects whose connection 

 with them was not at first apparent. 



He liked puzzles about numbers, as he liked riddles, 

 and, when very good, plays upon words and puns. So all 

 puzzles were referred to him, and gradually all attempts 

 to do the impossible, by circle squarers and trisectors. One 



1 For a list of all Mr. De Morgan's works see Appendix. The 

 articles on education for the U. K. Society were reprinted in a book 

 entitled The Schoolmaster, edited by Charles Knight, London, 1836. 



