406 A Century of /Science 



meters use to denote the ratio of the circumference 

 of a circle to its diameter. The arithmetical value 

 of this symbol is 3.1415926536, and so on in an 

 endless fraction. Is it not hard to see what there 

 can be in such an innocent decimal to irritate 

 human beings and destroy their peace of mind? 

 Yet so it is. Many a human life has been wrecked 

 upon Pi. To a certain class of our fellow-crea 

 tures its existence is maddening. It interferes 

 with the success of a little scheme on which they 

 have set their hearts, nothing less than to con 

 struct a square which shall be exactly equivalent 

 in dimensions to a given circle. Nobody has ever 

 done such a thing, for it cannot be done. But 

 when mathematicians tell these poor people that 

 such is the case, they howl with rage, and, dipping 

 their pens in gall, write book after book bristling 

 with figures to prove that they have &quot; squared the 

 circle.&quot; The Harvard library does not buy such 

 books, but it accepts all manner of gifts, and has 

 thus come to contain some queer things. 



When I consulted the subject catalogue, to see 

 under what head it had been customary to classify 

 these lucubrations on Pi, I found, sure enough, 

 that it was Mathematics Circle-Squaring. Fol 

 lowing this cue, I explored the drawers in other 

 directions, and found that books 011 &quot;perpetual 



