[The last number of this Budget had stood in type for months, waiting until
there should be a little cessation of correspondence more connected with
the things of the day. {80} I had quite forgotten what it was to contain;
and little thought, when I read the proof, that my allusions to my friend
Mr. Boole, then in life and health, would not be printed till many weeks
after his death. Had I remembered what my last number contained, I should
have added my expression of regret and admiration to the numerous obituary
testimonials, which this great loss to science has called forth.
The system of logic alluded to in the last number of this series is but one
of many proofs of genius and patience combined. I might legitimately have
entered it among my _paradoxes_, or things counter to general opinion: but
it is a paradox which, like that of Copernicus, excited admiration from its
first appearance. That the symbolic processes of algebra, invented as tools
of numerical calculation, should be competent to express every act of
thought, and to furnish the grammar and dictionary of an all-containing
system of logic, would not have been believed until it was proved. When
Hobbes,[166] in the time of the Commonwealth, published his _Computation or
Logique_, he had a remote glimpse of some of the points which are placed in
the light of day by Mr. Boole. The unity of the forms of thought in all the
applications of reason, however remotely separated, will one day be matter
of notoriety and common wonder: and Boole's name will be remembered in
connection with one of the most important steps towards the attainment of
this knowledge.]