[323]. Whatever may have been imputed to some other studies under the notion of insignificancy and loss of time, yet these [mathematics], I believe, never caused repentance in any, except it was for their remissness in the prosecution of them.—Franklin, Benjamin.
On the Usefulness of Mathematics, Works (Boston, 1840), Vol. 2, p. 69.
[324]. What science can there be more noble, more excellent, more useful for men, more admirably high and demonstrative, than this of the mathematics?—Franklin, Benjamin.
On the Usefulness of Mathematics, Works (Boston, 1840), Vol. 2, p. 69.
[325]. The great truths with which it [mathematics] deals, are clothed with austere grandeur, far above all purposes of immediate convenience or profit. It is in them that our limited understandings approach nearest to the conception of that absolute and infinite, towards which in most other things they aspire in vain. In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths, which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there, when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven. They existed not merely in metaphysical possibility, but in the actual contemplation of the supreme reason. The pen of inspiration, ranging all nature and life for imagery to set forth the Creator’s power and wisdom, finds them best symbolized in the skill of the surveyor. “He meted out heaven as with a span;” and an ancient sage, neither falsely nor irreverently, ventured to say, that “God is a geometer.”—Everett, Edward.
Orations and Speeches (Boston, 1870), Vol. 3, p. 514.
[326]. There is no science which teaches the harmonies of nature more clearly than mathematics,....—Carus, Paul.
Andrews: Magic Squares and Cubes (Chicago, 1908), Introduction.
[327]. For it being the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme prejudice of knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty of generalities, as in a champion region, and not in the enclosures of particularity; the Mathematics were the goodliest fields to satisfy that appetite.—Bacon, Lord.