4 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



that the generous soil of Flanders has ever produced, but as 

 the years go by, he becomes ever more opinionated and more 

 tyrannical. Once he is well started, I know that my chances of 

 escaping are very small. As he had now made up his mind to 

 prove that I was wrong to expect the world to move as if its 

 own life were hardly longer than my own, I knew that he would 

 not let me go on until he had labored his argument at least ten 

 times over and I resigned myself meekly to my fate — for I love 

 Uncle Christiaan, even if he drives me mad. And then his knowl- 

 edge and his wisdom are very great and it is worth while to 

 record at least the gist of what he said; but as he is hopelessly 

 discursive and as I could not possibly reproduce the saving hu- 

 mor of his tone, and his smiles and gestures, it will be best 

 to tell the story in my own way. Not one story, but three stories, 

 for the old man is nothing if not thorough. As a matter of fact 

 he told me seven, and he would have told as many more but 

 that I admitted he was right and promised that I would be more 

 patient in the future. 



7he Tirst Story. One of the greatest discoveries man ever made 

 is that of our numerals, but we are so familiar with them that 

 we take them too much for granted. Yet if you begin to think 

 it over, is that system not very admirable which enables us 

 not simply to write down any number very quickly and with- 

 out ambiguity, but also to use those numbers in our computa- 

 tions, to manipulate them according to a few fixed rules for 

 any length of time, almost mechanically, and to obtain finally 

 another number, written in the same short-hand, and represent- 

 ing the very result which we had started to find out? 



To be sure, we might have obtained the same result by count- 

 ing with pebbles, but that would have consumed far more time. 

 It would have been on the whole more difficult, our chances of 

 error greater and the errors themselves harder to detect. 



Our system of numerals is not so simple as it seems to be, 

 for it involves at least three distinct ideas. To consider first the 



