For it being the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme
prejudice of knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty of
generalities, as in a champaign region, and not in the inclosures of
particularity, the mathematics of all other knowledge were the
goodliest fields to satisfy that appetite. But for the placing of
this science, it is not much material: only we have endeavoured in
these our partitions to observe a kind of perspective, that one part
may cast light upon another.
(2) The mathematics are either pure or mixed. To the pure
mathematics are those sciences belonging which handle quantity
determinate, merely severed from any axioms of natural philosophy;
and these are two, geometry and arithmetic, the one handling
quantity continued, and the other dissevered. Mixed hath for
subject some axioms or parts of natural philosophy, and considereth
quantity determined, as it is auxiliary and incident unto them. For
many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient
subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor
accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and
intervening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective,
music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and divers
others.
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