Rare Book Monthly
Articles - October - 2008 Issue
Washington-Pike-Mathematics-Science Archive to be Sold
The man himself
to keep. The Washington letter is of course the primary value in the lot. Mr. Washington, an obsessive record keeper, kept copies of his correspondence and this letter appears in Vol. 30 on pages 2 and 3 of Fitzpatrick's "The Writings of George Washington." Such letters are today valued by period [pre-Revolution, Revolution, 1783-1788, as President 1789-1796, and his final years]. This letter falls into the period between the end of the Revolution and his assumption of the Presidency, a relatively quiet time. Content is also crucial. In this letter the issue is learning and education; the emerging father of the nation encouraging intellectual attainment. Finally, letters in Washington's hand are valued more highly than letters prepared by others that he signed. It is in his own hand and a complete three-page document.
Here is the text:
To Nicholas Pike
Mount Vernon, June 20, 1788
Sir: I request you will accept my best thanks for your polite letter of Jany. 1st [which did not get to my hand til yesterday] and also for the copy of your "System of Arithmetic" which you were pleased to present to me. The handsome manner in which that Work is printed and the elegant manner in which it is bound, are pleasing proofs of the progress which the Arts are making in this Country. But I should do violence to my own feelings, if I suppressed an acknowledgment of the belief that that work is calculated to be equally useful and honorable to the United States.
It is but right, however, to apprise you, that, diffident of my own decision, the favorable opinion I entertain of your performance is founded rather on the explicit and ample testimonies of gentlemen confessedly possessed of great mathematical knowledge, than on the partial and incompetent attention I have been able to pay to it myself. But I must be permitted to remark that the subject, in my opinion, holds a higher rank in the literary scale than you are pleased to allow. The science of figures, to a certain degree, is not only indispensably requisite in every walk of civilized life; but the investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings. In a clouded state of existence, where so many things appear precarious to the bewildered research, it is here that the rational faculties find a firm foundation to rest upon. From the high ground of mathematical and philosophical demonstration, we are insensibly led to far nobler speculations and sublimer meditations.
