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Updated: May 13, 2025
A scientific subject does not occupy so much space in the life of a man of science of the first rank without being important and difficult. The subject of algebraic analysis above mentioned, which Fourier had studied with a perseverance so remarkable, is not an exception to this rule.
Reid puts this as follows: 'It is by natural signs chiefly that we give force and energy to language; and the less language has of them, it is the less expressive and persuasive. ... Artificial signs signify, but they do not express; they speak to the understanding, as algebraic characters may do, but the passions and the affections and the will hear them not: these continue dormant and inactive, till we speak to them in the language of nature, to which they are all attention and obedience.
In a city where social problems are solved by algebraic equations, adventurers have many chances in their favor. Even if this family were of gypsy extraction, it was so wealthy, so attractive, that fashionable society could well afford to overlook its little mysteries.
Evidently he had gone deeply into the matter, analytically and with profound scrutiny. He had brought all the resources of his mind to bear upon it during his walk, and he had come back to apply some new combination. He sat in his armchair, and pen in hand he began what looked very much like algebraic formula: I followed with my eyes his trembling hands, I took count of every movement.
Immediately, all the mythical material vanishes. Thus, "Selene kisses the sleeping Endymion" becomes the dry formula, "It is night." The most skilled linguists often declare themselves unable to change the pliant tongue of the imaginative age into our algebraic idioms. Thought by imagery cannot remain itself and at the same time take on a rational dress.
After all that has been said, we shall not approach it "a priori". We are too apt to put the Incarnation more or less in algebraic form: x+y=a, where a stands for the historical Jesus Christ, and x and y respectively for God and man. But what do we mean by x and y? Let us face our facts. What do we know of man apart from Jesus Christ?
I found no one there. I ventured a knock at the door opening into the captain's stateroom. The word "Enter!" answered me. I did so and found Captain Nemo busy with calculations in which there was no shortage of X and other algebraic signs. "Am I disturbing you?" I said out of politeness. "Correct, Professor Aronnax," the captain answered me.
He sometimes appealed to his friend, as a man with a mathematical turn of mind, possessing an education that extended far into conic sections and algebraic formulae, to balance up the lists, and give him a candid and statistical opinion as to which of the two he should favor with serious proposals.
He rarely put his hand into his purse, he drew a great check on his bankers. Was a congregation without a church, or a village without a school, or a river without a bridge, Mr. Trevanion set to work on calculations, found out the exact sum required by an algebraic x y, and paid it as he would have paid his butcher.
It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the highest comedy that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his useless patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently took wings, his long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases as a petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only to fail through the influence of some frivolous woman; the meetings with men of business who expected their capital to bring them places and a peerage, as well as large interest.
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