The spider's web is a glorious mathematical problem. I should enjoy
working it out in all its details, were I not afraid of wearying the
reader's attention. Perhaps I have even gone too far in the little that
I have said, in which case I owe him some compensation: 'Would you
like me,' I will ask him, 'would you like me to tell you how I acquired
sufficient algebra to master the logarithmic systems and how I became
a surveyor of Spiders' webs? Would you? It will give us a rest from
natural history.'
I seem to catch a sign of acquiescence. The story of my village school,
visited by the chicks and the porkers, has been received with some
indulgence; why should not my harsh school of solitude possess its
interest as well? Let us try to describe it. And who knows? Perhaps,
in doing so, I shall revive the courage of some other poor derelict
hungering after knowledge.
I was denied the privilege of learning with a master. I should be wrong
to complain. Solitary study has its advantages: it does not cast you in
the official mould; it leaves you all your originality. Wild fruit, when
it ripens, has a different taste from hothouse produce: it leaves on
a discriminating palate a bittersweet flavor whose virtue is all the
greater for the contrast. Yes, if it were in my power, I would start
afresh, face to face with my only counselor, the book itself, not always
a very lucid one; I would gladly resume my lonely watches, my struggles
with the darkness whence, at last, a glimmer appears as I continue to
explore it; I should retraverse the irksome stages of yore, stimulated
by the one desire that has never failed me, the desire of learning and
of afterwards bestowing my mite of knowledge on others.
When I left the normal school, my stock of mathematics was of the
scantiest. How to extract a square root, how to calculate and prove the
surface of a sphere: these represented to me the culminating points of
the subject. Those terrible logarithms, when I happened to open a
table of them, made my head swim, with their columns of figures; actual
fright, not unmixed with respect, overwhelmed me on the very threshold
of that arithmetical cave. Of algebra I had no knowledge whatever. I had
heard the name; and the syllables represented to my poor brain the whole
whirling legion of the abstruse.
Besides, I felt no inclination to decipher the alarming hieroglyphics.
They made one of those indigestible dishes which we confidently extol
without touching them. I greatly preferred a fine line of Virgil, whom I
was now beginning to understand; and I should have been surprised
indeed had any one told me that, for long years to come, I should be an
enthusiastic student of the formidable science. Good fortune procured me
my first lesson in algebra, a lesson given and not received, of course.
A young man of about my own age came to me and asked me to teach him
algebra. He was preparing for his examination as a civil engineer; and
he came to me because, ingenuous youth that he was, he took me for
a well of learning. The guileless applicant was very far out in his
reckoning.
His request gave me a shock of surprise, which was forthwith repressed
on reflection: 'I give algebra lessons?' said I to myself. 'It would be
madness: I don't know anything about the subject!'
And I left it at that for a moment or two, thinking hard, drawn now
this way, now that with indecision: 'Shall I accept? Shall I refuse?'
continued the inner voice.
Pooh, let's accept! An heroic method of learning to swim is to
leap boldly into the sea. Let us hurl ourselves head first into the
algebraical gulf; and perhaps the imminent danger of drowning will call
forth efforts capable of bringing me to land. I know nothing of what
he wants. It makes no difference: let's go ahead and plunge into the
mystery. I shall learn by teaching.
It was a fine courage that drove me full tilt into a province which I
had not yet thought of entering. My twenty-year-old confidence was an
incomparable lever.
'Very well,' I replied. 'Come the day after tomorrow, at five, and we'll
begin.'
This twenty-four hours' delay concealed a plan. It secured me the
respite of a day, the blessed Thursday, which would give me time to
collect my forces.
Thursday comes. The sky is gray and cold. In this horrid weather, a
grate well filled with coke has its charms. Let's warm ourselves and
think.
Well, my boy, you've landed yourself in a nice predicament! How will
you manage tomorrow? With a book, plodding all through the night, if
necessary, you might scrape up something resembling a lesson, just
enough to fill the dread hour more or less. Then you could see about the
next: sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. But you haven't the
book. And it's no use running out to the bookshop. Algebraical treatises
are not current wares. You'll have to send for one, which will take
a fortnight at least. And I've promised for tomorrow, for tomorrow
certain! Another argument and one that admits of no reply: funds are
low; my last pecuniary resources lie in the corner of a drawer. I count
the money: it amounts to twelve sous, which is not enough.
Must I cry off? Rather not! One resource suggests itself: a highly
improper one, I admit, not far removed indeed from larceny. O quiet
paths of algebra, you are my excuse for this venial sin! Let me confess
the temporary embezzlement.
Life at my college is more or less cloistered. In return for a modest
payment, most of us masters are lodged in the building; and we take our
meals at the principal's table. The science master, who is the big gun
of the staff and lives in the town, has nevertheless, like ourselves,
his own two cells, in addition to a balcony, or leads, where the
chemical preparations give forth their suffocating gases in the open
air. For this reason, he finds it more convenient to hold his class here
during the greater part of the year. The boys come to these rooms in
winter, in front of a grate stuffed full of coke, like mine, and there
find a blackboard, a pneumatic trough, a mantelpiece covered with glass
receivers, panoplies of bent tubes on the walls, and, lastly, a
certain cupboard in which I remember seeing a row of books, the oracles
consulted by the master in the course of his lessons.
'Among those books,' said I to myself, 'there is sure to be one on
algebra. To ask the owner for the loan of it does not appeal to me.
My amiable colleague would receive me superciliously and laugh at my
ambitious aims. I am sure he would refuse my request.'
The future was to show that my distrust was justified. Narrow mindedness
and petty jealousy prevail everywhere alike.
I decide to help myself to this book, which I should never get by
asking. This is the half-holiday. The science master will not put in an
appearance today; and the key of my room is practically the same as his.
I go, with eyes and ears on the alert. My key does not quite fit; it
sticks a little, then goes in; and an extra effort makes it turn in
the lock. The door opens. I inspect the cupboard and find that it does
contain an algebra book, one of the big, fat books which men used to
write in those days, a book nearly half a foot thick. My legs give way
beneath me. You poor specimen of a housebreaker, suppose you were caught
at it! However, all goes well. Quick, let's lock the door again and go
back to our own quarters with the pilfered volume.
And now we are together, O mysterious tome, whose Arab name breathes a
strange mustiness of occult lore and claims kindred with the sciences of
almagest and alchemy. What will you show me? Let us turn the leaves at
random. Before fixing one's eyes on a definite point in the landscape,
it is well to take a summary view of the whole. Page follows swiftly
upon page, telling me nothing. A chapter catches my attention in the
middle of the volume; it is headed, Newton's Binomial Theorem.
The title allures me. What can a binomial theorem be, especially one
whose author is Newton, the great English mathematician who weighed the
worlds? What has the mechanism of the sky to do with this? Let us read
and seek for enlightenment. With my elbows on the table and my thumbs
behind my ears, I concentrate all my attention.
I am seized with astonishment, for I understand! There are a certain
number of letters, general symbols which are grouped in all manner of
ways, taking their places here, there and elsewhere by turns; there are,
as the text tells me, arrangements, permutations and combinations.
Pen in hand, I arrange, permute and combine. It is a very diverting
exercise, upon my word, a game in which the test of the written result
confirms the anticipations of logic and supplements the shortcomings of
one's thinking apparatus.
'It will be plain sailing,' said I to myself, 'if algebra is no more
difficult than this.'
I was to recover from the illusion later, when the binomial theorem,
that light, crisp biscuit, was followed by heavier and less
digestible fare. But, for the moment, I had no foretaste of the
future difficulties, of the pitfall in which one becomes more and more
entangled, the longer one persists in struggling. What a delightful
afternoon that was, before my grate, amid my permutations and
combinations! By the evening, I had nearly mastered my subject. When the
bell rang, at seven, to summon us to the common meal at the principal's
table, I went downstairs puffed up with the joys of the newly initiated
neophyte. I was escorted on my way by a, b and c, intertwined in cunning
garlands.
Next day, my pupil is there. Blackboard and chalk, everything is ready.
Not quite so ready is the master. I bravely broach my binomial theorem.
My hearer becomes interested in the combinations of letters. Not for a
moment does he suspect that I am putting the cart before the horse and
beginning where we ought to have finished. I relieve the dryness of my
explanations with a few little problems, so many halts at which the mind
takes breath awhile and gathers strength for fresh flights.
We try together. Discreetly, so as to leave him the merit of the
discovery, I shed a little light on the path. The solution is found. My
pupil triumphs; so do I, but silently, in my inner consciousness, which
says:
'You understand, because you succeed in making another understand.'
The hour passed quickly and very pleasantly for both of us. My young man
was contented when he left me; and I no less so, for I perceived a new
and original way of learning things.
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 I lacked; 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, I used 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, I could
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.
At that time, the college in which, two years before, I had made my
first appearance as a teacher, had just halved the size of its classes
and largely increased its staff. The newcomers all lived in the
building, like myself, and we had our meals in common at the principal's
table. We formed a hive where, in our leisure time, some of us, in our
respective cells, worked up the honey of algebra and geometry, history
and physics, Greek and Latin most of all, sometimes with a view to the
class above, sometimes and oftener with a view to acquiring a degree.
The university titles lacked variety. All my colleagues were bachelors
of letters, but nothing more. They must, if possible, arm themselves
a little better to make their way in the world. We all worked hard and
steadily. I was the youngest of the industrious community and no less
eager than the rest to increase my modest equipment.
Visits between the different rooms were frequent. We would come to
consult one another about a difficulty, or simply to pass the time
of day. I had as a neighbor, in the next cell to mine, a retired
quartermaster who, weary of barrack life, had taken refuge in education.
When in charge of the books of his company he had become more or less
familiar with figures; and it became his ambition to take a mathematical
degree. His cerebrum appears to have hardened while he was with his
regiment. According to my dear colleagues, those amiable retailers
of the misfortunes of others, he had already twice been plucked.
Stubbornly, he returned to his books and exercises, refusing to be
daunted by two reverses.
It was not that he was allured by the beauties of mathematics, far from
it; but the step to which he aspired favored his plans. He hoped to
have his own boarders and dispense butter and vegetables to lucrative
purpose. The lover of study for its own sake and the persistent trapper
hunting a diploma as he would something to put in his mouth were not
made to understand or to see much of each other. Chance, however,
brought us together.
I had often surprised our friend sitting in the evening, by the light of
a candle, with his elbows on the table and his head between his hands,
meditating at great length in front of a big exercise book crammed with
cabalistic signs. From time to time, when an idea came to him, he would
take his pen and hastily put down a line of writing wherein letters,
large and small, were grouped without any grammatical sense. The letters
x and y often recurred, intermingled with figures. Every row ended
with the sign of equality and a nought. Next came more reflection, with
closed eyes, and a fresh row of letters arranged in a different order
and likewise followed by a nought. Page after page was filled in this
queer fashion, each line winding up with 0.
'What are you doing with all those rows of figures amounting to zero?' I
asked him one day.
The mathematician gave me a leery look, picked up in barracks. A
sarcastic droop in the corner of his eye showed how he pitied my
ignorance. My colleague of the many noughts did not, however, take an
unfair advantage of his superiority. He told me that he was working at
analytical geometry.
The phrase had a strange effect upon me. I ruminated silently to this
purpose: there was a higher geometry, which you learnt more particularly
with combinations of letters in which x and y played a prominent part.
When my next-door neighbor reflected so long, clutching his forehead
between his hands, he was trying to discover the hidden meaning of his
own hieroglyphics; he saw the ghostly translation of his sums dancing in
space. What did he perceive? How would the alphabetical signs, arranged
first in one and then in another manner, give an image of the actual
things, an image visible to the eyes of the mind alone? It beat me.
'I shall have to learn analytical geometry some day,' I said. 'Will you
help me?'
'I'm quite willing,' he replied, with a smile in which I read his lack
of confidence in my determination.
No matter; we struck a bargain that same evening. We would together
break up the stubble of algebra and analytical geometry, the foundation
of the mathematical degree; we would make common stock: he would bring
long hours of calculation, I my youthful ardor. We would begin as soon
as I had finished with my arts degree, which was my main preoccupation
for the moment.
In those far off days it was the rule to make a little serious literary
study take precedence of science. You were expected to be familiar
with the great minds of antiquity, to converse with Horace and Virgil,
Theocritus and Plato, before touching the poisons of chemistry or the
levers of mechanics. The niceties of thought could only be the gainers
by these preparations. Life's exigencies, ever harsher as progress
afflicts us with its increasing needs, have changed all that. A fig for
correct language! Business before all!
This modern hurry would have suited my impatience. I confess that I
fumed against the regulation which forced Latin and Greek upon me before
allowing me to open up relations with the sine and cosine. Today, wiser,
ripened by age and experience, I am of a different opinion. I very much
regret that my modest literary studies were not more carefully conducted
and further prolonged. To fill up this enormous blank a little, I
respectfully returned, somewhat late in life, to those good old books
which are usually sold second-hand with their leaves hardly cut.
Venerable pages, annotated in pencil during the long evenings of my
youth, I have found you again and you are more than ever my friends. You
have taught me that an obligation rests upon whoever wields the pen: he
must have something to say that is capable of interesting us. When
the subject comes within the scope of natural science, the interest is
nearly always assured; the difficulty, the great difficulty, is to prune
it of its thorns and to present it under a prepossessing aspect. Truth,
they say, rises naked from a well. Agreed; but admit that she is all
the better for being decently clothed. She craves, if not the gaudy
furbelows borrowed from rhetoric's wardrobe, at least a vine leaf. The
geometers alone have the right to refuse her that modest garment; in
theorems, plainness suffices. The others, especially the naturalist, are
in duty bound to drape a gauze tunic more or less elegantly around her
waist.
Suppose I say: 'Baptiste, give me my slippers.'
I am expressing myself in plain language, a little poor in variants. I
know exactly what I am saying and my speech is understood.
Others--and they are numerous--contend that this rudimentary method is
the best in all things. They talk science to their readers as they might
talk slippers to Baptiste. Kaffir syntax does not shock them. Do not
speak to them of the value of a well selected term, set down in its
right place, still less of a lilting construction, sounding rather well.
Childish nonsense they call all that; the fiddling of a short sighted
mind!
Perhaps they are right: the Baptiste idiom is a great economizer of time
and trouble. This advantage does not tempt me; it seems to me that
an idea stands out better if expressed in lucid language, with sober
imagery. A suitable phrase, placed in its correct position and saying
without fuss the things we want to say, necessitates a choice, an often
laborious choice. There are drab words, the commonplaces of colloquial
speech; and there are, so to speak, colored words, which may be compared
with the brushstrokes strewing patches of light over the gray background
of a painting. How are we to find those picturesque words, those
striking features which arrest the attention? How are we to group them
into a language heedful of syntax and not displeasing to the ear?
I was taught nothing of this art. For that matter, is it ever taught
in the schools? I greatly doubt it. If the fire that runs through our
veins, if inspiration do not come to our aid, we shall flutter the pages
of the thesaurus in vain: the word for which we seek will refuse to
come. Then to what masters shall we have recourse to quicken and develop
the humble germ that is latent within us? To books.
As a boy, I was always an ardent reader; but the niceties of a
well-balanced style hardly interested me: I did not understand them. A
good deal later, when close upon fifteen, I began vaguely to see that
words have a physiognomy of their own. Some pleased me better than
others by the distinctness of their meaning and the resonance of their
rhythm; they produced a clearer image in my mind; after their fashion,
they gave me a picture of the object described. Colored by its adjective
and vivified by its verb, the name became a living reality: what it said
I saw. And thus, gradually, was the magic of words revealed to me, when
the chances of, my undirected reading placed a few easy standard pages
in my way.