Euclid's Elements is the foundational text of western civilization, popularizing reasoning from first principles. The Bible is a foundational text of western my

Euclid's Elements is the foundational text of western civilization, popularizing reasoning from first principles. The Bible is a foundational text of western mythology, not much different from the mythological texts of any other part of the world. You will find no mention of The Bible or any of its characters in The Federalist Papers. You will find much discussion of classical governments and several references to Montesquieu. John Locke specifically cited Euclid as his influence and structured his writing to match. Lincoln, perhaps the most stridently moral of America's presidents, was known as the village atheist when he was a young man, studied Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which put much of the blame on Christianity, and Paine's The Age of Reason. He carried Euclid's Elements with him until he could derive any of the propositions in the first six books at will. It is only by the power of the ideas that Euclid's Elements (written in Alexandria) survives today. The Library of Alexandria was partially burned when Caesar set fire to the fleet in the harbor, which spread to the library and destroyed some part, to Caesar's embarrassment. Later, Christian zealots under Theophilus destroyed 10% of the collection. Finally, Muslim zealots under Caliph Omar destroyed the rest. Nobody looks to Theophilus's or Omar's governments as models of good government today.