JOURNAL 
OF THE 
Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society 
The study of the historical development of mathematics, 
and in particular the study of geometry, leads one to the con- 
clusion that the great roles in the drama of science have been 
played by two inter-related, yet widely differing, forces — 
intuition and logic. Huxley once laughingly said of Herbert 
Spencer that his idea of tragedy was a deduction killed by a 
fact. Some of the greatest pants in the drama of science 
have been played by intuition; but that drama becomes a 
tragedy when intuitional prevision is annihilated by the inex- 
orable irony of fact. The most epoch-making discoveries find 
their origin in the fortunate conjunction of intuition and 
experience. And the whole history of science is the history 
of the struggle of man’s intuition, fortified by experience, to 
read the inscrutable riddle of Nature. 
I venture to assert that nowhere is this struggle more suc- 
cinctly and definitively illustrated than in the story of man’s 
• effort to formulate the hypotheses which constitute the foun- 
MAY, 1907 
VOL. XXIII 
NO. 1 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF GEOMETRY. 
LIBRA 
NEW Y 
BOTAN5 
CARD! 
BY ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, PH.D. 
Printed May 13. 
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