THE SQUARING OF THE CIRCLE. 113 



high-handed manner of rejection only the envy of the great and 

 powerful at his grand intellectual discovery. He is determined to 

 secure recognition, and appeals therefore to the public. The news- 

 papers must obtain for him the appreciation that scientific societies 

 have denied. And every year the old mathematical sea-serpent 

 more than once disports itself in the columns of our newspapers in 

 the shape of an announcement that Mr. N. N., of P. P., has at last 

 solved the problem of the quadrature of the circle. 



But what manner of people are these circle-squarers, when ex- 

 amined by the light? Almost always they will be found to be im- 

 perfectly educated persons, whose mathematical knowledge does 

 not exceed that of a modern high-school student. It is seldom that 

 they know accurately what the requirements of the problem are and 

 what its nature ; they are totally ignorant of the two and a half 

 thousand years' history of the problem ; and they have no idea 

 whatever of the important investigations which have been made 

 with regard to it by great and real mathematicians in every century 

 down to our own time.* 



Yet great as is the quantum of ignorance that circle-squarers 

 intermix with their intellectual products, the lavish supply of con- 

 ceit and egotism with which they season their performances is still 

 greater. I have not far to go to furnish a verification of this. A 

 book printed in Hamburg in the year 1840 lies before me, in which 

 the author thanks Almighty God at every second page that He has 

 selected him and no one else to solve the " problem phenomenal" 

 of mathematics, "so long sought for, so fervently desired, and at- 

 tempted by millions." After this modest author has proclaimed 

 himself the unmasker of Archimedes's deceit, he says : "And thus 

 it hath pleased our mother Nature to withhold this precious math- 

 ematical jewel from the eye of human investigation, until she 

 thought it fitting to reveal truth to simplicity." 



This will suffice to show the great fatuity of the author. But 

 it does not suffice to prove his ignorance. He has no conception 



* For the full psychogeny and psychiatry of the circle-squarer see A. De Mor- 

 gm, A Budget of Paradoxes (London, 1872). Tr. 



