Various artifices are employed to denote the end of the reaction.
The expression (ab) 4 properly appertains to a quartic; for a quadratic it may also be written (ab) 2 (cd) 2, and would denote the square of the discriminant to a factor pres.
But on the assumption that "mathematics" is to denote a science well marked out by its subject matter and its methods from other topics of thought, and that at least it is to include all topics habitually assigned to it, there is now no option but to employ "mathematics" in the general sense' of the "science concerned with the logical deduction of consequences from the general premisses of all reasoning."
The term is now used generally to denote one of gentle birth.
Those words only denote a certain stage of understanding of phenomena.