III. — On the Variation and Functional Relation of Certain Sen- 

 tence-Constants in Standard Literature 



BY R. K. MORITZ 



"Surely the claim of mathematics to take a place among the liberal arts 

 must now be a Imitted as fully made good. ... It seems to me that the 

 whole of cesthetic (so far as at present revealed) may be regarded as a 

 scheme having four centers, viz. , Epic, Music, Plastic, Malhematic. There 

 will be a common plane to every three of these, outside of which lies the 

 fourth; and through every two may be drawn a common axis opposite to the 

 axis passing through the remaining two." 



J. J. Sylvester, Philosophic Magazine, 1878 (1), p. 184. 



"It therefore seems clear that mathematics can be shown to sustain a 

 certain relation to rhetoric and may aid in determining its laws." 



L. A. Sherman, University Studies, vol. I, p. 130. 



Pythagoras taught that the essence of things is numerical re- 

 lation, Aristotle that number is the means to true knowledge. 

 In more modern times Lagrange conceived of the possibility of 

 representing the complete history of the universe by one huge 

 differential equation, the actual state of progress at any moment 

 by a single time integral between the limits, minus infinity and 

 zero. According to Herbert Spencer's definition . of a law of 

 nature, every such law can ultimately be embodied in an alge- 

 braic equation. Solvay, a Belgian scientist, recently established 

 an equation governing the energy set free by an organism in 

 vital phenomena for a given food supply. 



Even Rhetoric bows to Number. During the closing decade 

 of the last century it was demonstrated that all good writers lisp 

 in numbers, that there is cadence in the essays of Bacon and 

 Emerson and in the histories of Hume and Macaulay just as 

 truly as in the "winged words" of a Homer, a Milton, or a 

 Goethe. This cadence is as inaudible as the music of the spheres 

 to ordinary ears, but it reveals its sweet measures to the patient 



229 



