Page:Symbolical Methods of Study.djvu/19

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PREFACE.

Lest it should be supposed that my own beloved teachers have led me to take too mystical a view of Science, I select the following passages out of many which might be quoted, to prove that they were not singular in their opinion of the relation between mathematics and spiritual truth : —

"Everything that is human is possessed of an infinite charm for the heart of man. We all belong to one another. In a certain point of view a hive of bees is only one multitudinous individual, and so is the family of Adam. Each of us is but a member, or a fibril, or a particle, infused with the common life of all. . . . We cannot a moment escape from the feeling of this pervading and inclusive existence. Even hatred and contempt cannot divorce us from the swarming individuality of human life. . . .

" Facts are the body of Science, and the idea of those facts is its spirit. ... It is not the mathe- matics but a mathetical way of thinking, not natural history but a classific way of thinking, not natural philosophy but an inductive way of think- ing, that are to be shed into the mind of the general student." — Samuel Brown, " Essay on the History of Science."

" Philosophy, as the science which embraces the principles of the Universe or world, is only a logical,