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But DA is equal to AC;

therefore BA, AC are greater than BC.

Similarly we can prove that AB, BC are also greater than CA, and BC, CA than AB.

Therefore etc.


Q. E. D.

1


1 It was the habit of the Epicureans, says Proclus (p. 322), to ridicule this theorem as being evident even to an ass and requiring no proof, and their allegation that the theorem was “known” (γνώριμον) even to an ass was based on the fact that, if fodder is placed at one angular point and the ass at another, he does not, in order to get to his food, traverse the two sides of the triangle but only the one side separating them (an argument which makes Savile exclaim that its authors were “digni ipsi, qui cum Asino foenum essent,” p. 78). Proclus replies truly that a mere perception of the truth of the theorem is a different thing from a scientific proof of it and a knowledge of the reason why it is true. Moreover, as Simson says, the number of axioms should not be increased without necessity.

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