A Reality Completely Independent Of The Spirit

Talk With M. Hermite. He Never Evokes A Concrete Image, Yet You Soon Perceive That The More Abstract Entities Are To Him Like Living Creatures.

. . . By Natural Selection Our Mind Has Adapted Itself To The Conditions Of The External World. It Has Adopted The Geometry Most Advantageous To The Species Or, In Other Words, The Most Convenient. Geometry Is Not True, It Is Advantageous.

Mathematicians Are Born, Not Made.

The Advance Of Science Is Not Comparable To The Changes Of A City, Where Old Edifices Are Pitilessly Torn Down To Give Place To New, But To The Continuous Evolution Of Zoologic Types Which Develop Ceaselessly And End By Becoming Unrecognisable To The Common Sight, But Where An Expert Eye Finds Always Traces Of The Prior Work Of The Centuries Past. One Must Not Think Then That The Old-fashioned Theories Have Been Sterile And Vain.

What Is A Good Definition? For The Philosopher Or The Scientist, It Is A Definition Which Applies To All The Objects To Be Defined, And Applies Only To Them; It Is That Which Satisfies The Rules Of Logic. But In Education It Is Not That; It Is One That Can Be Understood By The Pupils.