[310]. Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences.... Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of this world. And what is worse, men who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance and so do not seek a remedy.—Bacon, Roger.
Opus Majus, Part 4, Distinctia Prima, cap. 1.
[311]. Just as it will never be successfully challenged that the French language, progressively developing and growing more perfect day by day, has the better claim to serve as a developed court and world language, so no one will venture to estimate lightly the debt which the world owes to mathematicians, in that they treat in their own language matters of the utmost importance, and govern, determine and decide whatever is subject, using the word in the highest sense, to number and measurement.—Goethe.
Sprüche in Prosa, Natur, III, 868.
[312]. Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.—Thomson, W. (Lord Kelvin).
Thompson, S. P.: Life of Lord Kelvin (London, 1910), p. 1139.
[313]. The advancement and perfection of mathematics are intimately connected with the prosperity of the State.—Napoleon I.
Correspondance de Napoléon, t. 24 (1868), p. 112.
[314]. The love of mathematics is daily on the increase, not only with us but in the army. The result of this was unmistakably apparent in our last campaigns. Bonaparte himself has a mathematical head, and though all who study this science may not become geometricians like Laplace or Lagrange, or heroes like Bonaparte, there is yet left an influence upon the mind which enables them to accomplish more than they could possibly have achieved without this training.—Lalande.