A Dig at the Evolutionists 



Algebra is the oracle of the absolute truth, 

 because It reveals nothing but what the mind 

 had hidden In It under an amalgam of sym- 

 bols. We put 2 and 2 Into the machine; the 

 rollers work and show us 4. That Is all. 



But to this calculus, all-powerful so long 

 as It does not leave the domain of the ideal, 

 let us submit a very modest reality: the fall 

 of a grain of sand, the pendular movement 

 of a hanging body. The machine no longer 

 works, or does so only by suppressing al- 

 most everything that is real. It must have 

 an Ideal material point, an ideal rigid thread, 

 an ideal point of suspension; and then the 

 pendular movement is translated by a form- 

 ula. But the problem defies all the artifices 

 of analysis If the oscillating body is a real 

 body, endowed with volume and friction; 

 if the suspensory thread is a real thread, en- 

 dowed with weight and flexibility; if the point 

 of support is a real point, endowed with re- 

 sistance and capable of deflection. So with 

 other problems, however simple. The exact 

 reality escapes the formula. 



Yes, it would be a fine thing to put the 

 world Into an equation, to assume as the first 

 principle a cell filled with albumen and by 

 transformation after transformation to dis- 

 cover life under its thousand aspects as the 

 20s 



