750 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



he has shown a way to escape such a conclusion. He makes us see 

 how the automatism of the subliminal self works only upon material 

 which the conscious self prepares for it and then explains how, 

 among the great number of combinations which the subliminal self 

 foims, only those come into our consciousness which are apt and 

 elegant and consequently affect our senses and attract our attention. 

 The simple and most harmonious construction turns out to be pre- 

 cisely the most useful as experience and reason repeatedly teaches. 

 The esthetic sentunent for the harmony of form and number and geo- 

 metrical elegance dominates the thought of the mathematician. His 

 soul is first of all that of an artist and a poet. 



These views, so deep and true, are somewhat at variance with the 

 classic idea of a mathematician, respectable, exact, but rather ludi- 

 crous with his mechanical brain and an eye which the traditional 

 glasses have rendered blind to all beauty and in whose heart nature 

 has placed, instead of feeling, a table of seven-decimal-place loga- 

 rithms. 



In unveiling to us m a man of science worthy of the name, a sensi- 

 tive and esthetic being, Poincare has again yielded to his mnate 

 modesty. The limitations of our brain have made us exalt its merits 

 m our modern society where the ''cult of intelligence" rules; we have 

 had and perhaps still have a tendency to exalt the virtues of the will 

 at the expense of those which come from the heart. We hold as 

 superior to all else the attributes of the thinking man and so our 

 justice has a deep disdain for those who are irresponsible, though 

 indeed we do not judge that they merit punishment. In thus show- 

 ing us that his so logical a development for science was due largely to 

 his subconscious and involuntary and only partly to his conscious 

 faculties, Poincare doubtless somewhat lowered his own glory, per- 

 haps that of all scientists in the eyes of some; as to that I imagine 

 that he would be easily consoled. This marvelous autopsychological 

 study has explamed one thing which seemed at first very surprising, 

 how working only four hours, or rather consciously working only 

 four hours a day, Poincare was able to produce a scientific contribu- 

 tion perhaps greater than that ever made by any other mathemati- 

 cian. Uncontrolled by his will, his cerebral macliine worked by itself 

 night and day, without stoppmg. Perhaps otherwise he might not 

 have died so young. That interior flame which without rest, shone 

 so brightly, burned up too soon the lamp which held it. 



III. POINCARE THE ASTRONOMER. 



In astronomy the work of Poincare was gigantic. That science 

 could not have failed to attract him from the very first because of all 

 the exterior world it offered to his power as a generalizer, disdamful 

 of conditions, the greatest and most lasting problems. There is no 



