In preparing a syllabus, therefore, no one should hope to bring the teaching world at once to agree to any great reduction in the number of basal propositions, nor to agree to any radical change of terminology, symbolism, or sequence. Rather should it be the purpose to show that we have enough topics in geometry at present, and that the number of propositions is really greater than is absolutely necessary, so that teachers shall not be led to introduce any considerable number of propositions out of the large amount of new material that has recently been accumulating. Such a syllabus will always accomplish a good purpose, for at least it will provoke thought and arouse interest, but any other kind is bound to be ephemeral.[32] Besides the evolutionary attempts at rearranging and reducing in number the propositions of Euclid, there have been very many revolutionary efforts to change his treatment of geometry entirely. The great French mathematician, D'Alembert, for example, in the eighteenth century, wished to divide geometry into three branches: (1) that dealing with straight lines and circles, apparently not limited to a plane; (2) that dealing with surfaces; and (3) that dealing with solids. So Meray in France and De Paolis[33] in Italy have attempted to fuse plane and solid geometry, but have not produced a system that has been particularly successful. More recently Bourlet, Grevy, Borel, and others in France have produced several works on the elements of mathematics that may lead to something of value. They place intuition to the front, favor as much applied mathematics as is reasonable, to all of which American teachers would generally agree, but they claim that the basis of elementary geometry in the future must be the "investigation of the group of motions." It is, of course, possible that certain of the notions of the higher mathematical thought of the nineteenth century may be so simplified as to be within the comprehension of the tyro in geometry, and we should be ready to receive all efforts of this kind with open mind. These writers have not however produced the ideal work, and it may seriously be questioned whether a work based upon their ideas will prove to be educationally any more sound and usable than the labors of such excellent writers as Henrici and Treutlein, and H. Mueller, and Schlegel a few years ago in Germany, and of Veronese in Italy. All such efforts, however, should be welcomed and tried out, although so far as at present appears there is nothing in sight to replace a well-arranged, vitalized, simplified textbook based upon the labors of Euclid and Legendre.