I Mean The Word Proof Not In

Further, The Dignity Of The Science Itself Seems To Require That Every Possible Means Be Explored For The Solution Of A Problem So Elegant And So Celebrated.

The Problem Of Distinguishing Prime Numbers From Composite Numbers And Of Resolving The Latter Into Their Prime Factors Is Known To Be One Of The Most Important And Useful In Arithmetic.

That This Subject [of Imaginary Magnitudes] Has Hitherto Been Considered From The Wrong Point Of View And Surrounded By A Mysterious Obscurity, Is To Be Attributed Largely To An Ill-adapted Notation. If, For Example, +1, -1, And The Square Root Of -1 Had Been Called Direct, Inverse And Lateral Units, Instead Of Positive, Negative And Imaginary (or Even Impossible), Such An Obscurity Would Have Been Out Of The Question.

I Mean The Word Proof Not In The Sense Of The Lawyers, Who Set Two Half Proofs Equal To A Whole One, But In The Sense Of A Mathematician, Where Half Proof = 0, And It Is Demanded For Proof That Every Doubt Becomes Impossible.

I Have Had My Results For A Long Time: But I Do Not Yet Know How I Am To Arrive At Them.