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Article ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY NATURAL GENIUS, ← Page 3 of 6 →
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Account Of An Extraordinary Natural Genius,
In the month of March 173 6 , he was employed to receive the excise of the little district in which he lived , and he found that in order to discharge this office , is was necessary for him not onby to write , but to be master of the two first rules of arithmetic , addition and subtraction . His ambition had now an object , -and a desire to keep the accounts of the tax he was to gather , better than others of his stationdetermined him once more to applto arithmetichowever
hate-, y , ful the task , and whatever labour it mi ght require . Pie now regretted that he was without an instructor , and would have been glad at any rate to have practised the rules without first knowing the rationale . Plis mind was continually upon the stretch to find out some way of supplying this want , and at last he recollected that one of his schoolfellows had a book from which examples of several rules were taken
by the master to exercise the scholars . He therefore went immedi-r ately in search of this school-fellow , and was overjoyed to find upon enquiry , that the book was still in his possession . Having borrowed this important volume , he returned home with it , and beginning his studies as he went along , he pursued them with such application , that in about six months he was master of the rule of three with
fractions . The reluctance with which he began . to learn the powers and pro- ? perties of figures was now at an end ; he knew enough to make him earnestly desirous of knowing more ; he was therefore impatient to proceed from this book to one that was more difficult , and having at length found means to procure one that treated of more intricate and complicated calculationshe made himself master of that also before
, the end of the year 1739 . He had the good fortune soon after to meet with a treatise of geometry , written by Pachek , the same author whose arithmetic he had been studying ; and finding that this science was in some measure founded on that which he had learnt , he applied to his new book with great assiduity for some time , but at length , not being able perfectly to comprehend the theory as he went
on , nor yet to discover the utility of the practice , he laid it aside , to which he was also induced by the necessity of his immediate atten * dance to his field and his vines . The severe winter which happened in the year 1740 , obliged him to keep long within his cottage , and having there no employment either for his body or his mind , he had once more recourse to his book
of geometry ; and having at length comprehended some of the leading principles , he procured a little box ruler and an old pair of compasses , , on one point of which he mounted the end of a quill cut into a pen . With these instruments he employed himself incessantl y in making various geometrical figures on paper , to illustrate the theory by a solution of the problems . He was thus busied in his cot till March
, and the joy arising from the knowledge he had acquired was exceeded only by his desire of knowing more . He was now necessaril y recalled to that labour by which alone he could procure himself food , and was besides without money to pro-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Account Of An Extraordinary Natural Genius,
In the month of March 173 6 , he was employed to receive the excise of the little district in which he lived , and he found that in order to discharge this office , is was necessary for him not onby to write , but to be master of the two first rules of arithmetic , addition and subtraction . His ambition had now an object , -and a desire to keep the accounts of the tax he was to gather , better than others of his stationdetermined him once more to applto arithmetichowever
hate-, y , ful the task , and whatever labour it mi ght require . Pie now regretted that he was without an instructor , and would have been glad at any rate to have practised the rules without first knowing the rationale . Plis mind was continually upon the stretch to find out some way of supplying this want , and at last he recollected that one of his schoolfellows had a book from which examples of several rules were taken
by the master to exercise the scholars . He therefore went immedi-r ately in search of this school-fellow , and was overjoyed to find upon enquiry , that the book was still in his possession . Having borrowed this important volume , he returned home with it , and beginning his studies as he went along , he pursued them with such application , that in about six months he was master of the rule of three with
fractions . The reluctance with which he began . to learn the powers and pro- ? perties of figures was now at an end ; he knew enough to make him earnestly desirous of knowing more ; he was therefore impatient to proceed from this book to one that was more difficult , and having at length found means to procure one that treated of more intricate and complicated calculationshe made himself master of that also before
, the end of the year 1739 . He had the good fortune soon after to meet with a treatise of geometry , written by Pachek , the same author whose arithmetic he had been studying ; and finding that this science was in some measure founded on that which he had learnt , he applied to his new book with great assiduity for some time , but at length , not being able perfectly to comprehend the theory as he went
on , nor yet to discover the utility of the practice , he laid it aside , to which he was also induced by the necessity of his immediate atten * dance to his field and his vines . The severe winter which happened in the year 1740 , obliged him to keep long within his cottage , and having there no employment either for his body or his mind , he had once more recourse to his book
of geometry ; and having at length comprehended some of the leading principles , he procured a little box ruler and an old pair of compasses , , on one point of which he mounted the end of a quill cut into a pen . With these instruments he employed himself incessantl y in making various geometrical figures on paper , to illustrate the theory by a solution of the problems . He was thus busied in his cot till March
, and the joy arising from the knowledge he had acquired was exceeded only by his desire of knowing more . He was now necessaril y recalled to that labour by which alone he could procure himself food , and was besides without money to pro-