_The Man of Forty Crowns_: I have sometimes a great mind to laugh at all
I have been told.
_The Geometrician_: And a very good mind it is. I advise you to doubt of
everything, except that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two
right ones, and that triangles which have the same bases and height are
equal to one another; or like propositions, as, for example, that two
and two make four.
_The Man of Forty Crowns_: Yes; I hold it very wise to doubt; but I am
curious since I have made my fortune and have leisure. I could wish,
when my will moves my arm or my leg, to discover the spring, for surely
there is one, by which my will moves them. I wonder sometimes why I can
lift or lower my eyes, yet cannot move my ears. I think--and I wish I
could know a little how--I mean,--there, to have my thought palpable to
me, to touch it, as it were. That would surely be very curious. I want
to find out whether I think from myself, or whether it is God that gives
me my ideas; whether my soul came into my body at six weeks, or at one
day old; how it lodged itself in my brain; whether I think much when in
a profound sleep, or in a lethargy. I torture my brains to know how one
body impels another. My sensations are no less a wonder to me; I find
something divine in them, and especially in pleasure. I have striven
sometimes to imagine a new sense, but could never arrive at it.
Geometricians know all these things; kindly be so good as to teach me.
_The Geometrician_: Alas! We are as ignorant as you. Apply to the
Sorbonne.