Untitled - JScholarship

MODERN TIMES 205
could not divide 2021 by 43, though such problems had been
performed centuries before according to the teaching of
Brahmagupta and Bhaskara by boys brought up on the far-off
banks of the Ganges, It has been reported that Charles XII,
of Sweden considered a man ignorant of arithmetic but half
a man. Such was not the sentiment among English gentlemen.
Not only was arithmetic unstudied by them, but considered
beneath their notice. If we are safe in following
Timbs"s account of a book of 1622, entitled Peacham's Compleat
Gentleman, which enumerates subjects 3t that time among
the becoming accomplishments of an English man of rank,
then it appears that the elements of astronomy, geometry, and
mechanics were studies beginning to demand a gentleman's
attention, while arithmetic still remained untouched,' Listen
to another writer, Edmund Wells, In his Young Gentleman's
Course in Mathematicks, London, 1714, this able author aims
to provide for gentlemanly education as opposed to that of
" the meaner part of mankind," - He expects those whom God
has relieved from the necessity of working, to exercise their
faculties to his greater glory. But they must not " be so Brisk
and Airy, as to think, that the kno-wing how to cast Accompt
is requisite only for such Underlings as Shop-keepers or Tradesmen,"
and if only for the sake of taking care of themselves, " no
gentleman ought to think Arithmetick below Him that do's
not think an Estate below Him." All the information we
could find respecting the education of the upper classes points
to the conclusion that arithmetic was neglected, and that De
Morgan^ was right in his statement that as late as the eighteenth
century there could have been no such thing as a teacher
of arithmetic in schools like Eton. In 1750, Warren Hastings,
1 Times, School-Days, p. 101.
2 De Morgan, Arith. Books, p. 64.
3 Arith. Books, p. 76.