Take Newton’s Principia for an example. The book contains many propositions, both construction problems and theorems, but it is not necessary to read all of them in detail, especially the first time through. Read the statement of the proposition, and glance down the proof to get an idea of how it is done; read the statements of the so-called lemmas and corollaries; and read the so-called scholiums, which are essentially discussions of the relations between propositions and of their relations to the work as a whole. You will begin to see that whole if you do this, and so to discover how the
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