268 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1859. In 1850, shortly before Mr. Drinkwater Bethune's 



dra death, he had sent to England some copies of a work by 

 Kamchundra, a native teacher, and head master of Science 

 in the school at Delhi. A copy was presented to Mr. De 

 Morgan, who saw in this treatise on problems of Maxima 

 and Minima f not only merit worthy of encouragement, but 

 merit of a very peculiar kind, the encouragement of which 

 . . . was likely to promote native effort towards the restora- 

 tion of the native mind in India. 5 With his lively interest 

 in all that belonged to India, the land of his birth, and with 

 his still wider interest in every effort of original thought, 

 especially where, as bearing the impress of national charac- 

 ter, it had place in the history of mental progress, he called 

 the attention of the Court of Directors to the work of the 

 Hindoo teacher, suggesting that Eamchundra should 

 receive a reward for his work, and that the work itself 

 should be brought under the notice of Mathematicians in 

 Europe. After some correspondence with the authorities 

 and with Ramchundra himself, the Court expressing 

 entire concurrence in his views, his offer to superintend 

 the reprint of Ramchundra's work was accepted. It 

 was a work of some labour, because it was done so 

 thoroughly. His preface, consisting of twenty-three 

 closely printed pages, gives a short but scientific history 

 of the rise and progress of Mathematical science in 

 Greece and India, and an analysis of the mental character 

 of the two nations in their respective leanings to geo- 

 metrical and algebraic thought, with the causes of the 

 entire extinction of Mathematical speculation in India, 

 while it remained to some extent active in Greece as long 

 as that country existed as a nation. The extinction of 

 active speculation, and its replacement by a taste for 

 routine, c to which,' he says, c inaccurate thinkers give 

 the name of practical, 9 he shows to be coeval with the 

 death of Science in a nation. This was the fate of Hindoo 

 philosophy, and how to revive active thought in the land 

 of his birth was to him a question of deep interest. His 



