may say, without form and void; and we are free to speculate on the momentous questions: Will the crown (which is the Devil) fall into the base (which is Christ)? Will the base float up into the crown? Will the two coalesce half way? Will they both, unknit from their sides, be carried away to Limbo by some blast of strange doctrine? One thing s certain, they cannot long remain as they are. Rare Ben Jonson chanted the Trinity, or Equilateral Triangle; rare Walt Whitman has chanted the Square Deific (with Satan for the fourth side); no poet can care to chant the two straight lines which, in the language of Euclid, and in the region of intelligence, cannot enclose a space, but are as a magnified symbol of equal—to nothing.
P.S.—It may be appropriately added that the books of Euclid are really symbolic and prophetic expositions of most sublime and sacrosanct mysteries, though in these days few persons seem aware of the fact. Thus the very first definition, "A point is position without magnitude," exactly defines every point of difference between the theologians. So a line, which is as the prolongation of a point, or length without breadth, represents in one sense (for each symbol has manifold meanings) the history of an theological system. An acute angle is, say, Professor Clifford; an obtuse angle, Mr. Whalley; a right angle, the present writer: non angeli sed Angli. The first proposition, "To erect an equilateral triangle upon a given finite straight line," indicates the problem solved by Christianity, when it erected the Trinity on the basis of the man we call Jesus. This pregnant subject should be worked out in detail through the whole eight books.
