Was there ever anything like the swing of the weather? Now it is warm here again, and ready to rain. Agassiz told me that the change in Cambridge, on Thursday, was 71? in ten hours. In Boston it was Go?, being 100 or 1? colder in Cambridge.
I see Agassiz often of late at Peirce's Lowell Lectures on "the Mathematics in the Cosmos." The object is to show that the same ideas, principles, relations, which the mathematician has wrought out from his own mind, are found in the system of nature, indicating an identity of thought. You see of what immense interest the discussion is. But Peirce's delivery of his thoughts is very lame and imperfect (extemporaneous). Two lectures ago, as I sat by Agassiz, I said at the close, "Well, I feel obliged to apologize to myself for being here."
A. Why?
[257] D. Because I don't understand half of it.
A. No? I am surprised. I do.
D. Well, that is because you are learned. (Thinking with myself, however, why does he? For he knows no more of the mathematics than I do. But I went on.)
D. Well, my apology is this; Peirce is like nature,-vast, obscure, mysterious,—great bowlders of thought, of which I can hardly get hold; dark abysses, into which I cannot see; but, nevertheless, flashes of light here and there, and for these I come.
A. Why, yes, I understand him. Just now, when he drew that curious diagram to illustrate a certain principle, I saw it clearly, for I know the same thing in organic nature.
D. Aha! the Mathematics in the Cosmos!
Was it not striking? Here are the Mathematics (Peirce), and Natural Science (Agassiz), and they easily understand each other, because the lecturer's principle is true.