236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
JOHN DEE AND HIS “FRUITFUL PREFACE” 
By MARY ESTHER TRUEBLOOD 
MT. HOLYOKE COLLEGH 
ge may be necessary to introduce this “ faithful student of the school 
of verity,” for his contribution to human thought was of the kind 
that is easily absorbed in the sum total of the period, while the man 
himself remains little known to any but his contemporaries. The 
writer’s introduction to him was through his “ fruitful preface ” to the 
first translation of Euclid’s “ Elements” into English printed in 1570. 
That long preface is an interesting document in the development of 
intellectual freedom as well as in the history of science. It was ad- 
dressed not so much to learned men as to the author’s countrymen at 
large, though there was an occasional side glance at the university 
pedants. It expresses ideas strikingly like those for which the name 
of Francis Bacon stands, though written when Bacon was a boy of nine 
years. In it the author makes a vigorous appeal to the men of the time 
to shake themselves free from the commentational habit of the middle 
ages—to consider that the Greeks and Romans, who were held in such 
reverence, had not achieved all that was to be achieved. ‘“ Master 
Dee” was fully aware of the state of opinion that must be contended 
against. He says: 
Well, I am nothing affrayde of the disdayne of some such, as thinke Sciences 
and Artes to be but Seven. Perhaps those such may, with ignorance and shame 
enough, come short of them seven also: and yet nevertheless they can not pre- 
scribe a certaine number of Artes: and in each certain unpassable boundes, to 
God, Nature, and man’s Industrie. New Artes dayly rise up: and there was 
no such order taken, that all Artes should in one age, or in one land, or of one 
man be made knowen to the world. 
The immediate and ostensible purpose of the preface was to attract 
attention to the newly translated “ Elements.” The author begins: 
Neither do I think it mete for so strange matter (as now is ment to be 
published) and to so strange an audience, to be bluntly, at first put forth with- 
out a peculiar Preface. 
In his pride in the achievements of England in the reign of 
Elizabeth, John Dee was at one with his countrymen, and whether 
consciously or unconsciously he appealed to men through the motive 
dominant in that period when he explained at great length how the 
“ wonderful applications of mathematics ” might be used for the glori- 
fication of the country. At the same time, the author sounds in 
advance a distinct seventeenth century note in suggesting that the laws 
governing natural phenomena might be better understood by being 
treated mathematically, and foreshadows the modern “ Precisions and 
Approximations-mathematik ” when he speaks of “ allowing somewhat 
