There is much else in the melting of the ice. Was it then that Northern Africa dried up? Was it then that the old watercourses which are now desert and in which you can still find proof of the habitations of men, and the stranded beasts and fishes of old rivers, were in full spate?
Who lived there? What did they in the story of mankind? And did Egypt when it was already able to build and to carve men out of stone, look out from the head of the Delta upon a shallow sea?
I think the greater part of the story of the world's landscape has been lost to us for ever.
ON THE HATRED OF NUMBERS
I knew a man once who was the head of his college and very famous as a scholar; because, although he had no learning, he was very kind and witty. But this man had one thing upon which he never jested, and that was his hatred (which he pretended to be a contempt) of numbers.
He would say, not as a curiosity, still less as an apology, that he was quite incapable of "doing sums"; and as I met him in early youth the example has influenced the whole of my life. I have known all my life what I think many people do not know, or at least not many people of those engaged in exposition, that a large part of educated people feel thus about numbers. They neglect them, or hate them, or despise them, and in any case cannot and will not deal with them.
Now when one learns a thing like that early in life, when one early discovers that a thing apparently ridiculous is quite common, the mind sets to work at once to try and find out an explanation. For a very long time I could pretend to none, but I think I am at last beginning to see my way in the matter and to grasp why it is that so many people avoid the prime measure of reality.