ence further, and himself adds to the number of
the interesting truths before known. He may be often stopt in his
researches by the difficulties that beset his path; he may be frustrated
in his attempts to discover relations, depending on complicated data,
which he cannot unravel or reconcile; but his study is wholly
independent of accident, his reliance is on his own powers. Contestation
and uncertainty he never can know; a stranger to all controversy, above
all mystery, he possesses his mind in unruffled peace. Bound by no
authority, regardless of all consequences as of all opposition, he is
entire master of his conclusions as of his operations, and feels even
perfect indifference to the acceptance or objection of his doctrines,
because he confidently looks forward to their universal and immediate
admission the moment they are comprehended."

All this is strikingly expressed, yet it is after all but a showy
hypothesis. That pure mathematics have nothing to do with external
existence, may be easily granted; but that mathematicians are exempt
from controversy, is no more a matter of experience than that all
mathematical assertions are self-evident. The history of science is a
direct contradiction of this halcyon hypothesis. The bitterest
controversies, and the most ridiculous too, have been raised on
mathematical opinions. Universal experience tends strongly to the proof,
that no exclusive exertion of the mind is more fatal to its general
vigour, more apt to narrow its range of conception; more distinctly
operative, by its very exclusiveness, and by its making minute truths
the especial object of the mind, in rendering it incapable of those
loftier and broader truths on which depend all the great concerns of
society, all the efficient progress of civilisation, and all the nobler
growth of human powers--than the mere study of mathematics. A spider
drawing his web out of his own fibres, and constructing his little lines
and circles in his dusty corner, is the fittest emblem of the mere
mathematician. In this language, we acknowledge the use of the science;
we protest only against its pretence of superiority. Every man's
experience of college studies may supply him with examples; but we have
room but for one, and that of a sufficiently high order.

When Napoleon assumed the French throne, in his ambition of being
regarded as the universal patron of science he appointed the author of
the _Mechanique Celeste_ a member of hi