At the end of 1867 I addressed the following letter to the Athenæum:
Pseudomath, Philomath, and Graphomath.
December 31, 1867
Many thanks for the present of Mr. James Smith's letters
of Sept. 28 and of Oct. 10 and 12. He asks where you will be if you read and digest his letters: you probably will be somewhere first. He afterwards asks what the WE of the Athenæum will be if, finding it impossible to controvert, it should refuse to print. I answer for you, that We-We of the Athenæum, not being Wa-Wa the wild goose, so conspicuous in "Hiawatha," will leave what controverts itself to print itself, if it please.
Philomath is a good old word, easier to write and speak than mathematician. It wants the words between which I have placed it. They are not well formed: pseudomathete and graphomathete would be better: but they will do. I give an instance of each.
The pseudomath is a person who handles mathematics as the monkey handled the razor. The creature tried to shave himself as he had seen his master do; but, not having any notion of the angle at which the razor was to be held, he cut his own throat. He never tried a second time, poor animal! but the pseudomath keeps on at his work, proclaims himself clean-shaved, and all the rest of the world hairy. So great is the difference between moral and physical phenomena! Mr. James Smith is, beyond doubt, the great pseudomath of our time. His 3⅛ is the least of a wonderful chain of discoveries. His books, like Whitbread's barrels, will one day reach from Simpkin & Marshall's to Kew, placed upright, or to Windsor laid length-ways. The Queen will run away on their near approach, as Bishop Hatto did from the rats: but Mr. James Smith will follow her were it to John o' Groats.
The philomath, for my present purpose, must be exhibited as giving a lesson to presumption. The following anecdote is found in Thiébault's[[631]] Souvenirs de vingt ans de séjours à Berlin, published in 1804. The book itself got a high character for truth. In 1807 Marshal Mollendorff[[632]]
answered an inquiry of the Duc de Bassano,[[633]] by saying that it was the most veracious of books, written by the most honest of men. Thiébault does not claim personal knowledge of the anecdote, but he vouches for its being received as true all over the north of Europe.[[634]]
Diderot[[635]] paid a visit to Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Second. At that time he was an atheist, or at least talked atheism: it would be easy to prove him either one thing or the other from his writings. His lively sallies on this subject much amused the Empress, and all the younger part of her Court. But some of the older courtiers suggested that it was hardly prudent to allow such unreserved exhibitions. The Empress thought so too, but did not like to muzzle her guest by an express prohibition: so a plot was contrived. The scorner was informed that an eminent mathematician had an algebraical proof of the existence of God, which he would communicate before the whole Court, if agreeable. Diderot gladly consented. The mathematician, who is not named, was Euler.[[636]] He came to Diderot with the gravest air, and in a tone of perfect conviction said, "Monsieur!