Augustus De Morgan

“ The Encyclopædia Britannica is an old friend. Though it holds a proud place in our present literature, yet the time was when it stood by itself, more complete and more clear than anything which was to be found elsewhere. There must be studious men alive in plenty who remember when they were studious boys, what a literary luxury it was to pass a few days in the house of a friend who had a copy of this work. The present edition is a worthy successor of those which went before. ”

“ We have forgotten the name of that Sidrophel who lately discovered that the fixed stars were not single stars, but appear in the heavens like soles at Billingsgate, in pairs; while a second astronomer, under the influence of that competition in trade which the political economists tell us is so advantageous to the public, professes to show us, through his superior telescope, that the apparently single stars are really three. Before such wondrous mandarins of science, how continually must homunculi like ourselves keep in the background, lest we come between the wind and their nobility. ”

“ The cheapest and the least pretending, it is really the most philosophical of our scientific dictionaries. It is not made up of a series of treatises, some good and many indifferent, but is a thorough Dictionary, well proportioned and generally written by the best men of the time. The more closely it is examined, the more deeply will our obligation be felt to the intelligence and conscientiousness of its projector and editor. ”

“ Behmen's system, in fact, shows us the inside of things, while modern physical science is content with looking at the outside. Behmen traces back every outward manifestation or development to its one central root,—to that one central energy which, as yet, is only suspected; every link in the chain of his demonstration is perfect, and there is not one link wanting. He carries us from the out-births of the circumference, along the radius to the center, or point, and beyond that even to the zero, demonstrating the constitution of the zero, or nothing, with mathematical precision. ”

“ DECLARATION OF BELIEF 1864-65.—It often happens that persons combine to maintain and enforce an opinion; but it is, in our state of society, a paradox to unite for the sole purpose of blaming the opposite side. To invite educated men to do this, and above all, men of learning or science, is the next paradoxical thing of all. ”

“ I judge of a language by the colloquial idiom of educated men: that is, I take this to be the best medium between the extreme cases of one who is ignorant of grammar and one who is perched upon a style. Dialogue is what I want to judge by, and plain dialogue: so I choose Robert Recorde [609] and his pupil in the Castle of Knowledge, written before 1556. When Dr. Robert gets into his altitudes of instruction, he differs from his own common phraseology as much as probably did Bacon when he wrote morals and philosophy. ”

“ He may admit one and another principle to advise: but Custom is not a constitutional king; he may listen to his cabinet, but he decides for himself: and if the ministry should resign, he blesses his stars and does without them. We have a glorious liberty in England of owning neither dictionary, grammar, nor spelling-book: as many as choose write by either of the three, and decide all disputed points their own way, those following them who please. ”

“ THE FLY-LEAF PARADOX. The paradox being the proposition of something which runs counter to what would generally be thought likely, may present itself in many ways. There is a fly-leaf paradox, which puzzled me for many years, until I found a probable solution. I frequently saw, in the blank leaves of old books, learned books, Bibles of a time when a Bible was very costly, etc., the name of an owner who, by the handwriting and spelling, must have been an illiterate person or a child, followed by the date of the book itself. ”

“ But, ladies and gentlemen, it must be clear to you that if there were no other force in action, this centripetal force would draw our earth and the other planets into the Sun, and universal ruin would ensue. ”

“ This important matter of inequality, which has led us so far, is one to which the Encyclopædia is as subject as the Cyclopædia; but it is not so easily recognized as a fault. We receive the first book as mainly a collection of treatises: we know their authors, and we treat them as individuals. ”

“ The nonsense about Newton borrowing gravitation from Behmen passes only with those who know neither what Newton did, nor what was done before him.
The above reminds me of a class of paradoxers whom I wonder that I forgot; they are without exception the greatest bores of all, because they can put the small end of their paradox into any literary conversation whatever. I mean the people who have heard the local pronunciation of celebrated names, and attempt not only to imitate it, but to impose on others their broken German or Arabic, or what not. ”

“ A wise editor will not attempt any strong measures of correction: he will remember that if some portions be below the rest, which is a disadvantage, it follows that some portions must be above the rest, which is an advantage. The only practical level, if level there must be, is that of mediocrity, if not of absolute worthlessness: any attempt to secure equality of strength will result in equality of weakness. Efficient development may be cut down into meager brevity, and in this way only can apparent equality of plan be secured throughout. ”

“ But the dictionary should not put itself into antagonism with general feeling, nor even with the feelings of classes. We refer particularly to the ordinary and editorial teaching of the article. If, indeed, the writer, being at issue with mankind, should confess the difference, and give abstract of his full grounds, the case is altered: the editor then, as it were, admits a correspondent to a statement of his own individual views. The dictionary portion of the Britannica is quite clear of any lapses on this point, so far as we know: the treatises and dissertations rest upon their authors. ”

“ The production of a great dictionary of either of the kinds is far from an easy task. There is one way of managing the Encyclopædia which has been largely resorted to; indeed, we may say that no such work has been free from it. This plan is to throw all the attention upon the great treatises, and to resort to paste and scissors, or some process of equally easy character, for the smaller articles. However it may be done, it has been the rule that the Encyclopædia of treatises should have its supplemental Dictionary of a very incomplete character. ”

“ The circumstance is not so much noticed as might be expected, and this because many a person is in the habit of using such a dictionary chiefly with relation to one subject, his own; and more still want it for the pure dictionary purpose, which does not go much beyond the meaning of the word. But the person of full and varied reference feels the differences; and criticism makes capital of them. The Useful Knowledge Society was always odious to the organs of religious bigotry ”

“ I am in correspondence with the Admiralty, with nothing to get over except what I must call a perverse notion on the part of the Superintendent of the Almanac, who suspects one correction depending on the Moon's latitude; and the Astronomer Royal leans towards another depending on the date of the Queen's accession. I have no patience with these men: what can the Moon's node of the Queen's reign possibly have to do with the ratio in question? But this is the way with all the regular men of science; Newton is to them etc. ”

“ If any one should have the sense to leave out of his Greek the unmeaning scratches which they call accents, he goes to a lexicon and puts them in. He is powerful in routine; but when two routines interlace or overlap, he frequently takes the wrong one.
Subject to bad advice, and sometimes misled for a season, King Custom goes on his quiet way and is sure to be right at last.
"Treason does never prosper: what's the reason? Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason." Language is in constant fermentation, and all that is thrown in, so far as it is not fit to assimilate, is thrown off ”

“ Two months afterwards poor Newton writes to Collins, "Mr. Dary is very solicitous about mathematics": but in spite of the persecution, he subscribes himself to Dary "your loving friend." Dary's problem is that of finding the rate of interest of an annuity of which the value and term are given. Dary's theorem, which he seems to have invented specially for the solution of his problem, though it is of wide range, can be exhibited to mathematical readers even in our columns. In modern language, it is that the limit of φnx, when n increases without limit, is a solution of φx = x. ”

“ The great question whether the Word of God is in the Bible, or whether the Word of God is all the Bible, was quietly taken for granted in favor of the second view; to the end that men of science might be induced to blame those who took the first view. ”

“ This defect has run through all the editions; it is in the casting of the work. The reader must learn to take the results at their true value, which is not small. He must accustom himself to regard the Britannica as a splendid body of treatises on all that can be called heads of knowledge, both greater and smaller; with help from the accompanying dictionary, but not of the most complete character. ”

“ I have done nothing but alter the third person of the verb and the spelling: but great is the effect thereof. We say "the Sun shining makes the day"; Recorde, "the Sonne shynynge maketh the daye." These points apart, we see a resemblance between our English and that of three hundred years ago, in the common talk of educated persons, which will allow us to affirm that the language of the authorized Bible must have been very close to that of its time. ”

“ But when the word has become general, the specialist is not very wise if he refuse to follow the mass, and perfectly foolish if he insist on others following him. There have been a few who demanded that Euler should be pronounced in the German fashion: [611] Euler has long been the property of the world at large; what does it matter how his own countrymen pronounce the letters? Shall we insist on the French pronouncing Newton without that final tong which they never fail to give him? ”

“ If there be anything I hate more than another it is the proposal to place any persons, especially those who allow freedom to me, under any abridgment of their liberty to think, to infer, and to publish. ”

“ He was John Stiles, the London and Cambridge carrier: his name is a household word in the Macclesfield Letters, and is even enshrined in the depths of Birch's quartos. Dary informs Newton—let us do his memory this justice—that he had paid John Stiles for the carriage. At the time when the railroad to Cambridge was opened, a correspondent recommended the directors, in our columns, to call an engine by the name of John Stiles, and never to let that name go off the road. We do not know whether the advice was followed: if not, we repeat it.
Little points of life and manners come out occasionally. ”