Excerpt from The Monist, 1917, Vol. 27: A Quarterly Magazine Devoted to the Philosophy of Science The fate of this book was a tragic one. It remained unread and unsold until the publisher had to get rid of the whole edition as waste paper. Not even a review was granted to it; and what criticism there was had so little basis of understanding that it led to no deeper study of the work. Gauss wrote of it, in 1844, that its tendencies partly Went in the same direction in which he himself for almost half a century had wandered; but there seemed to him to be only a partial and distant resemblance in the tendency. He thought it would be necessary to familiarize oneself with the special terminology to get at the real kernel of the book. Grunert declared that he had not completely succeeded in forming a definite and clear Opinion about the work. Mobius, whom Grassmann had asked for a review in some critical journal because he stood nearest to the ideas in the book, answered that this mental relationship only existed in regard to mathematics, not with reference to philosophy; and that he considered himself incapable of estimating and appreciating the philosophical element of the excellent work - which lies at the base of all mathe maties. But he added that he recognized that, next to the great simplification of method, the principal gain consisted in the fact that by a more general comprehension of funda mental mathematical operations the difliculties of many analytical concepts are removed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.