90 Desultory Remarks on Academic and 



however, a schism has taken place among mathematicians of 

 our country ; those not educated at the universities have pre- 

 served the art of computation, while those who come from the 

 universities have well nigh abandoned it entirely. Let any 

 one compare the questions proposed in the Lady's or Gen- 

 tleman's Diary, the classical works of the non-academic stu- 

 dent in England with those given to the candidates for honours 

 at Cambridge, and he will see that the problems which are to 

 be answered numerically are at least three times as large a 

 per-centage in the former as in the latter. We regret this 

 prevailing fashion of the University of Cambridge; we think 

 that a little systematic attention to the acquisition of arithmetic 

 expertness would very much increase the amount of power 

 acquired by the students. We think also that the demand 

 for such qualifications would act most advantageously upon 

 the preparatory education." 



I have made this rather long quotation instead of simply re- 

 ferring to the article, in the hope that it may meet the eye and 

 arrest the attention of writers who can speiik reproachfully of 

 questions of calculation and detail. The regret which Mr. 

 De Morgan professes to feel for the prevailing fashion at 

 Cambridge may, I think, be extended more generally. Within 

 the last few years there has been, or I fancy there has been, a 

 tendency to adopt the fashion referred to in works intended 

 for non-academic students. I wish by no means to depreciate 

 mere theoretical problems ; perhaps there ought to be a fair 

 proportion of that description ; but when we consider that the 

 greater number of our really working mathematicians belong 

 to the non-academic order, that they commonly commence 

 their career in the publications alluded to and complete their 

 qualifications in some measure according to the models there 

 given, it is, I think, of very high importance that questions 

 of calculation be duly encouraged, for unless a mathematician 

 can carry out his theory into numerical calculation, he may 

 be a very learned and ingenious man, but he can hardly be 

 said to be a useful one. It is possible by dint of drilling or 

 application for a man to write out correctly, in symbolical lan- 

 guage, solutions to the most abstruse questions, and yet be not 

 a little puzzled to put the result in figures so that common 

 understandings may know what it means. I sincerely admire 

 the talents and attainments of men who can thus write in 

 theory ; but 1 should not esteem them the less, if, at the same 

 time, they were expert in adding up their tailor's bill. 



The mere theorist may revel in nubibus, but he must come 

 down to terrestrial matters of numerical calculations before he 

 can be of much real utility to his fellow men. 



