My Little Table 



calculation by the fire of the ideal, to lift one's 

 thought above mere formulas, to brighten the 

 caverns of the abstract with a spark of life: 

 was this not to ease the effort of penetrating 

 the unknown? Where my comrade plodded 

 on, scorning my viaticum, I performed a jour- 

 ney of pleasure. If I had to lean on the rude 

 staff of algebra, I had for my guide that voice 

 within me, urging me to lofty flights. Study 

 became a joy. 



It became still more interesting when, after 

 the angularities of a combination of straight 

 lines, I learnt to portray the graces of a curve. 

 How many properties were there of which the 

 compass knew nothing, how many cunning 

 laws lay contained in embryo within an equa- 

 tion, the mysterious nut which must be artis- 

 tically cracked to extract the rich kernel, the 

 theorem ! Take this or that term, place the 

 + sign before it and forthwith you have the 

 ellipse, the trajectory of the planets, with its 

 two friendly foci, transmitting pairs of vec- 

 tors whose sum is constant ; substitute the — 

 sign and you have the hyperbola with the 

 antagonistic foci, the desperate curve that 

 dives into space with infinite tentacles, ap- 

 proaching nearer and nearer to straight lines, 

 the asymptotes, but never succeeding in meet- 

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