Newton's Binomial Theorem 



the difficulties are broken up into sections 

 which, elucidated consecutively, together form 

 a lever capable of moving the block that re- 

 sists any direct efforts; lastly, it showed me 

 how order is engendered, order, the base of 

 clarity. If it has ever fallen to my lot to 

 write a page or two which the reader has run 

 over without excessive fatigue, I owe it, in 

 great part, to geometry, that wonderful 

 teacher of the art of directing one's thought. 

 True, it does not bestow imagination, a deli- 

 cate flower blossoming none knows how and 

 unable to thrive on every soil; but it arranges 

 what is confused, thins out the dense, calms 

 the tumultuous, filters the muddy and gives 

 lucidity, a superior product to all the tropes 

 of rhetoric. 



Yes, as a toiler with the pen, I owe much 

 to it. Wherefore my thoughts readily turn 

 back to those bright hours of my novitiate,, 

 when, retiring to a corner of the garden in 

 recreation-time, with a bit of paper on my 

 knees and a stump of pencil in my fingers, I 

 used to practise deducing this or that pro- 

 perty correctly from an assemblage of straight 

 lines. The others amused themselves all 

 around me; I found my delight in the frus- 

 trum of a pyramid. Perhaps I should have 



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