92 Desultory Remarks on Mathematics and Mathematicians, 



ingenuity of all. The mathematical essay may obtain the 

 student's perusal and possibly add to his knowledge ; but I do 

 not think it is so likely to arrest his attention and set his abi- 

 lities to work as a set of problems adapted to his acquirements 

 or going a little beyond them would be. 



Had the preceding observations been steadily kept to the 

 point instead of being desultory in the widest sense of the 

 word, they might have ended here; but now I must beg to 

 trouble the reader with a brief recapitulation, to set before 

 him more distinctly the object of this article. 



The importance of the mathematical sciences has been taken 

 for granted, and it has been endeavoured to make known the 

 facts, that the mode of cultivating them at Cambridge and at 

 other seminaries of lesser note is by continual exercise in ap- 

 plying principles to the solutions of problems, &c. ; that the 

 student is not only exercised in this way, but that he is also 

 enticed and encouraged by prizes and honorary distinctions, 

 well adapted to make him exert his abilities to the utmost. 

 That this is the plan pursued at the fountain-head of mathe- 

 matical education is well known, and perhaps it is the best 

 scheme to effect its purpose which the human intellect could 

 devise. It has been assumed, that it is obvious that only a 

 small part of the community can participate in such advan- 

 tages, and that it is equally obvious that, taken in any point 

 of view, a diffusion of the mathematical sciences among the 

 classes further down is of high concern ; and here I would wish 

 to advert briefly to the moral effect. It has been said, and in 

 my opinion justly said, that " he who knows the first proposi- 

 tion of Euclid is, in so far, better than he who does not" 

 (Edinburgh Review, No. 154, p. 376). This assumption 

 must not be misunderstood for the purpose of cavilling; no 

 undue preference is claimed for the mathematical sciences 

 with regard to other knowledge, but as an exercise to keep the 

 mind in a right direction none can fairly be placed higher, 

 and consequently he who knows the first proposition of Euclid 

 has acquired food for the mind which, to that extent, stops up 

 the inlets to error, and he is more unlikely to take a wrong 

 course than he who has a mind entirely vacant, and is there- 

 fore so far better. Even then, under a moral consideration, 

 as a mere mental discipline, the utility of scientific knowledge 

 to the most numerous part of our countrymen is worth attend- 

 ing to. But seeing that these classes furnish nearly all the 

 working part of our scientific men to whom a knowledge of 

 the mathematics is almost necessary, certainly highly desirable, 

 I think the advantages that must arise from the encourage- 

 ment of those sciences amongst these classes must be manifest. 



The mathematics were never more sedulously cultivated at 



