第61章 CHAPTER XII MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: NEWTON'S BI(3)

The ingenious and easy arrangement of the binomial gave me time to tackle my algebra book from the proper commencement. In three or four days, I had rubbed up my weapons. There was nothing to be said about addition and subtraction: they were so simple as to force themselves upon one at first sight. Multiplication spoilt things. There was a certain rule of signs which declared that minus multiplied by minus made plus. How I toiled over that wretched paradox! It would seem that the book did not explain this subject clearly, or rather employed too abstract a method. I read, reread and meditated in vain: the obscure text retained all its obscurity. That is the drawback of books in general: they tell you what is printed in them and nothing more. If you fail to understand, they never advise you, never suggest an attempt along another road which might lead you to the light. The merest word would sometimes be enough to put you on the right track; and that word the books, hidebound in a regulation phraseology, never give you.

How greatly preferable is the oral lesson! It goes forward, goes back, starts afresh, walks around the obstacle and varies the methods of attack until, at long last, light is shed upon the darkness. This incomparable beacon of the master's word was what Ilacked; and I went under, without hope of succor, in that treacherous pool of the rule of signs.

My pupil was bound to suffer the effects. After an attempt at an explanation in which I made the most of the few gleams that reached me I asked him:

'Do you understand? '

It was a futile question, but useful for gaining time. Myself not understanding, I was convinced beforehand that he did not understand either.

'No,' he replied, accusing himself, perhaps, in his simple mind, of possessing a brain incapable of taking in those transcendental verities.

'Let us try another method.'

And I start again this way and that way and yet another way. My pupil's eyes serve as my thermometer and tell me of the progress of my efforts. A blink of satisfaction announces my success. I have struck home, I have found the joint in the armor. The product of minus multiplied by minus delivers its mysteries to us.

And thus we continued our studies: he, the passive receiver, taking in the ideas acquired without effort; I, the fierce pioneer, blasting my rock, the book, with the aid of much sitting up at night, to extract the diamond, truth. Another and no less arduous task fell to my share: I had to cut and polish the recondite gem, to strip it of its ruggedness and present it to my companion's intelligence under a less forbidding aspect. This diamond cutter's work, which admitted a little light into the precious stone, was the favorite occupation of my leisure; and I owe a great deal to it.

The ultimate result was that my pupil passed his examination. As for the book borrowed by stealth, I restored it to the shelves and replaced it by another, which, this time, belonged to me.

At my normal school, 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 rests solidly upon the step already taken; I suspected geometry to be what it preeminently is: a school of intellectual fencing.

The truth demonstrated and its application matter little to me;what rouses my enthusiasm is the process that sets the truth before us. We start from a brilliantly lighted spot and gradually get deeper and deeper in the darkness, which, in its turn, becomes self-illuminated by kindling new lights for a higher ascent. This progressive march of the known toward the unknown, this conscientious lantern lighting what follows by the rays of what comes before: that was my real business.

Geometry was to teach me the logical progression of thought; it was to tell me how the difficulties are broken up into sections which, elucidated consecutively, together form a lever capable of moving the block that resists any direct efforts; lastly, it showed me how order is engendered, order, the base of clarity. If it has ever fallen to my lot to write a page or two which the reader has run over without excessive fatigue, I owe it, in great part, to geometry, that wonderful teacher of the art of directing one's thought. True, it does not bestow imagination, a delicate flower blossoming none knows how and unable to thrive on every soil; but it arranges what is confused, thins out the dense, calms the tumultuous, filters the muddy and gives lucidity, a superior product to all the tropes of rhetoric.

Yes, as a toiler with the pen, I owe much to it. Wherefore my thoughts readily turn back to those bright hours of my novitiate, when, retiring to a corner of the garden in recreation time, with a bit of paper on my knees and a stump of pencil in my fingers, Iused to practice deducing this or that property correctly from an assemblage of straight lines. The others amused themselves all around me; I found my delight in the frustum of a pyramid. Perhaps I should have done better to strengthen the muscles of my thighs by jumping and leaping, to increase the suppleness of my loins with gymnastic contortions. I have known some contortionists who have prospered beyond the thinker.

See me then entering the lists as an instructor of youth, fairly well acquainted with the elements of geometry. In case of need, Icould handle the land surveyor's stake and chain. There my views ended. To cube the trunk of a tree, to gauge a cask, to measure the distance of an inaccessible point appeared to me the highest pitch to which geometrical knowledge could hope to soar. Were there loftier flights? I did not even suspect it, when an unexpected glimpse showed me the puny dimensions of the little corner which I had cleared in the measureless domain.