rhaps the number of those
who would to-day follow Momoro's pretty wife with loud adulation and
Bacchanalian rejoicings to the insulted Church of Notre Dame, thus
publicly disowning the God of the Universe and discarding the sweetest
of all hopes, the hope of immortality and eternal youth after the
weariness of age, would be found to be very small. This was indeed a new
version of the old story of Godiva, wherein implacable, inhuman hate
sadly enough took the place of the sweet Christian charity of that dear
lady. Let us recognize its deep significance, and acknowledge that many
things of very great importance lie beyond the utmost limits of human
reason.

But let us not forget, meanwhile, that within its own sphere this same
Human Reason is an apt conjuror, marshalling and deftly controlling the
powers of the earth and air to a degree wonderful and full of interest.
And nowhere have all its possibilities so fully found expression in vast
attainment as in those studies preeminently called the mathematics, as
embracing all [Greek: mathaesis], all sound learning. Casting about for
some sure anchorage, drifting hither and thither over changeful seas
of phenomena, a large body of men, deep, clear thinkers withal, some
twenty-four centuries since, fancied that they had found _all_ truth
in the fixed, eternal relations of number and quantity. Hence that
wide-spread Pythagorean philosophy, with its spheral harmonics and
esoteric mysteries, uniting in one brotherhood for many years men of
thought and action,--dare we say, our inferiors? Why allude to the old
fable of the dwarf upon the giant's shoulders? Let us have a tender
care for the sensitive nature of this ultimate Nineteenth Century, and
refrain. They were not so far wrong either, those old philosophers; they
saw clearly a part of the boundless expanse of Truth,--and somewhat
prematurely, as we believe, pronounced it the true Land's End, stoutly
asserting that beyond lay only barren seas of uncertain conjecture.

But mark what followed! Presently, under their hands, fair and clear of
outline as a Grecian temple, grew up the science of Geometry. Perfect
for all time, and as incapable of change or improvement as the
Parthenon, appear the Elements of Euclid, whose voice comes floating
down through the ages, in that one significant rejoinder,--"_Non est
regia ad mathematicam via_." It is the reply of the mathematician,
quiet-eyed and thoughtful, to the first Ptolemy, inquiri