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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1089 



tilings" or by logic or by the muses upon 

 the creative activity of the human spirit. 



Consider next, the critic might say, our 

 human craving for a living sense of rap- 

 port and comradeship with a divine Being 

 infinite and eternal. Except through the 

 modern mathematical doctrine of infinity, 

 there is, he would have to say, no rational 

 way by which we may even approximate 

 an understanding of the supernal attri- 

 butes with which our faculty of idealization 

 has clothed Deity — no way, except this, by 

 which our human reason may gaze under- 

 standingly upon the downward-looking as- 

 pects of the overworld. But this is not all. 

 I need not, he would say, remind you of 

 the reverent saying attributed to Plato 

 that "God is a geometrician." Who is so 

 unfortunate as not to know something of the 

 religious awe, the solace and the peace that 

 come from cloistral contemplation of the 

 purity and everlastingness of mathematical 

 truth? 



Mighty is the charm of those abstractions to a 

 mind beset with images and haunted by himself. 



"More frequently," says Wordsworth, 

 speaking of geometry, 



More frequently from the same source I drew 



A pleasure quiet and profound, a sense 



Of permanent and universal sway. 



And paramount belief; there, recognized 



A type, for finite natures, of the one 



Supreme Existence, the surpassing life 



Which to the boundaries of space and time, 



Of melancholy space and doleful time, 



Superior and incapable of change, 



Not touched by welterings of passion — is. 



And hath the name of God. Transcendent peace 



And silence did wait upon those thoughts 



That were a frequent comfort to my youth. 



And SO our spokesman, did time allow, 

 might continue, inviting his auditors to 

 consider the relations of mathematics to 

 yet other great ideals of humanity — our 

 human craving for rectitude of thought, 

 for ideal justice, for dominion over the 



energies and ways of the material universe, 



for imperishable beauty, for the dignity 



and peace of intellectual harmony. We 



know that in all such cases the issue of the 



great critique would be the same, and it is 



needless to pursue the matter further. The 



light is clear enough. Mathematics is, in 



many ways, the most precious response 



that the human spirit has made to the cad 



of the infinite and eternal. It is man's 



best revelation of the "Deep Base of the 



World." 



Cassius J. Keyser 



Columbia Unitebsity 



THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



PRELIMINARY PROGRAM OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS FOR 



THE AUTUMN MEETING, NOVEMBER 15-lY 



The JSTational Academy of Sciences will 

 hold its stated autumn meeting at the Amer- 

 ican Museum of Natural History, ISTew York 

 City, on November 15, 16 and 17. The council 

 will meet at 4 p.m. on Monday, November 15. 

 There will be a lecture on " The Problem of 

 Aerial Transmission " by Professor M. I. 

 Pupin, of Columbia University, at 8 p.m., 

 followed by a reception in the museum. On 

 Tuesday and Wednesday morning at 9 :30 a.m. 

 there will be business sessions of the academy, 

 followed at 10 :30 by public scientific sessions. 

 On the afternoon of November 16, there will 

 be four papers of general interest. On the 

 afternoon of November lY, luncheon will be 

 served at the New York Zoological Park, fol- 

 lowed by a visit to the New York Botanical 

 Garden and afternoon tea. There will be a 

 dinner on the evening of November 16 at the 

 Chemists' Club. 



The preliminary program of scientific papers 

 is as follows : 



The Nature of Cell Folarity: Edwin G. Conklin. 

 Heredity of Stature: Chas. B. Davenport. 

 Parental Alcoliolism and Mental Ability, a Com- 

 parative Study of Habit Formation in the White 

 Bat: E. 0. MacDowell. (Introduced by 

 Charles B. Davenport.) 



The purpose of this investigation is to compare 

 the mental capabilities of rats whose parents were 



