The study of geometry is a petty and idle
exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than
the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with
physics but with ethics, _that_ is _mixed_ mathematics. The fact
which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The
purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and
elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral
life of its devotee, and he professes another religion than it
teaches, and worships at a foreign shrine. Anciently the faith
of a philosopher was identical with his system, or, in other
words, his view of the universe.
My friends mistake when they communicate facts to me with so much
pains. Their presence, even their exaggerations and loose
statements, are equally good facts for me. I have no respect for
facts even except when I would use them, and for the most part I
am independent of those which I hear, and can afford to be
inaccurate, or, in other words, to substitute more present and
pressing facts in their place.
The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and
generalizes their widest deductions.
The process of discovery is very simple.
