The Schoolmaster: Carpentras 



Fabre, " I had learnt a little elementary 

 geometry under a master. From the first 

 few lessons onwards, I rather enjoyed the 

 subject. I divined in it a guide for one's 

 reasoning faculties through the thickets of 

 the imagination; I caught a glimpse of a 

 search after truth that did not involve too 

 much stumbling on the way, because each 

 step forward is well braced by the step al- 

 ready taken. We start from a brilliantly- 

 lighted spot and gradually travel farther and 

 farther into the darkness, which kindles into 

 radiance as it sheds fresh beams of light for 

 a higher ascent. 



It is an excellent thing to regard geometry 

 as what it really is, before all things: a su- 

 perb intellectual gymnastic. By forcing the 

 mind to proceed from the known to the un- 

 known, always explaining what follows in 

 the light of what has gone before, it exer- 

 cises it and familiarises it with the logical 

 laws of thought. To be sure, " it does not 

 give us ideas, those delicate flowers which 

 unfold one knows not how, and are not able 

 to flourish in every soil," but it teaches us 

 to present them in a lucid and orderly man- 

 ner. Fabre tells us: 



At that time, the College in which, two years 

 before, I had made my first appearance as a teacher 



109 



