He spends much time on "minute" quantities at the start, but the explanation doesn't really make sense. To me, it's a mental model I can't trust, like rickety s

He spends much time on "minute" quantities at the start, but the explanation doesn't really make sense. To me, it's a mental model I can't trust, like rickety stairs. The book is explicitly calculus-as-a-bag-of-tricks; monkey-see, monkey-do. As he says: What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb.) Fair enough on proofs. BTW in the free gutenburg edition (maybe MG differs): "prologue" doesn't mention proofs, but that textbook writers make it difficult (no "introduction" - also no "preface", except to the 2nd ed): > The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics ... seem to desire to impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the most difficult way.