Augustus De Morgan

“ I do not say that every man has made direct acquaintance with the whole of his mental ancestry; many have, as I may say, only known their grandfathers by the report of their fathers. But even on this point it is remarkable how many of the greatest names in all departments of knowledge have been real antiquaries in their several subjects.
I may cite, among those who have wrought strongly upon opinion or practice in science, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Euclid, Archimedes, Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Ramus, Tycho Brahé, Galileo, Napier, Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton, Locke. ”

“ They might as well be squaring the circle, for any sense they show in this particular.
A great many individuals, ever since the rise of the mathematical method, have, each for himself, attacked its direct and indirect consequences. I shall not here stop to point out how the very accuracy of exact science gives better aim than the preceding state of things could give. I shall call each of these persons a paradoxer, and his system a paradox. I use the word in the old sense: a paradox is something which is apart from general opinion, either in subject-matter, method, or conclusion. ”

“ So hard upon poor discoverers are men of science who are not antiquaries in their subject! On leaving, he said, "Sir, Mr. De Morgan received me in a very different way! he heard me attentively, and I left him perfectly satisfied of the truth of my system." I have had much reason to think that many discoverers, of all classes, believe they have convinced every one who is not peremptory to the verge of incivility. ”

“ The manner in which the Galileo case, a reality, and the Virgil case, a fiction, have been hawked against the Roman see are enough to show that the Pope and his adherents have not cared much about physical philosophy. In truth, orthodoxy has always had other fish to fry. Physics, which in modern times has almost usurped the name philosophy, in England at least, has felt a little disposed to clothe herself with all the honors of persecution which belong to the real owner of the name. ”

“ When a reviewed author, as very often happens, writes to the editor of the reviewing journal to complain of what has been said of him, he frequently—even more often than not—complains of 'your reviewer.' He sometimes presumes that 'you' have, 'through inadvertence' in this instance, 'allowed some incompetent person to lower the character of your usually accurate pages.' Sometimes he talks of 'your scribe,' and, in extreme cases, even of 'your hack.' All this shows perfect ignorance of the journal system, except where it is done under the notion of letting the editor down easy. ”

“ This is as it should be: the Society must be supported. But it is not as it should be that a kind of title of honor should be forged, that a body should take upon itself to confer distinctions for science, when it is in the background—and kept there when the distinction is trumpeted—that the wearer is a man who can spare four pounds a year. I am well aware that in England a person who is not gifted either by nature or art, with this amount of money power, is, with the mass, a very second-rate sort of Newton, whatever he may be in the field of investigation. ”

“ Shakespeare an object of contempt as to learning! Though not myself a thoroughgoing Shakespearean—and adopting the first half of the opinion given by George III, "What! is there not sad stuff? only one must not say so"—I am strongly of opinion that he throws out the masonic signs of learning in almost every scene, to all who know what they are. And this over and above every kind of direct evidence. First, foremost, and enough, the evidence of Ben Jonson that he had "little Latin and less Greek"; then Shakespeare had as much Greek as Jonson would call some, even when he was depreciating. ”

“ Before proceeding to open the Budget, I say something on my personal knowledge of the class of discoverers who square the circle, upset Newton, etc. I suspect I know more of the English class than any man in Britain. I never kept any reckoning; but I know that one year with another—and less of late years than in earlier time—I have talked to more than five in each year, giving more than a hundred and fifty specimens. Of this I am sure, that it is my own fault if they have not been a thousand. Nobody knows how they swarm, except those to whom they naturally resort. ”

“ In the first place, the editor himself, when he has selected his contributor, feels that the contributor is likely to know his business better than an editor can teach him; in fact, it is on that principle that the selection is made. But he feels that he is more competent than the writer to judge questions of strength and of tone, especially when the general purpose of the journal is considered, of which the editor is the judge without appeal. An editor who meddles with substantive matter is likely to be wrong, even when he knows the subject ”

“ I have chosen my instances: if any one will undertake to show a person of little or no knowledge who has established himself in a great matter of pure thought, let him bring forward his man, and we shall see. ”

“ In the second place, a contributor knows that he is supplying an editor, and learns, without suppressing truth or suggesting falsehood, to make the tone of his communications suit the periodical in which they are to appear. Hence it very often arises that a reviewed author, who thinks he knows the name of his reviewer, and proclaims it with expressions of dissatisfaction, is only wrong in supposing that his critic has given all his mind. ”

“ The manner in which a paradoxer will show himself, as to sense or nonsense, will not depend upon what he maintains, but upon whether he has or has not made a sufficient knowledge of what has been done by others, especially as to the mode of doing it, a preliminary to inventing knowledge for himself. That a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is one of the most fallacious of proverbs. A person of small knowledge is in danger of trying to make his little do the work of more; but a person without any is in more danger of making his no knowledge do the work of some. ”

“ Fully conceding that the Royal Society is entitled to preeminent rank and all the respect due to age and services, I could not, nor can I now, see any more obligation in a contributor to send his best to that Society than he can make out to be due to himself. This pretension, in my mind, was hooked on, by my historical mode of viewing things already mentioned, to my knowledge of the fact that the Royal Society—the chief fault, perhaps, lying with its President, Sir Joseph Banks—had sternly set itself against the formation of other societies ”

“ I need not discuss this plan; there is no collective party in favor of it. Some may think it is not the only alternative; they have not produced any intermediate proposal in which any dozen of persons have concurred. Many will say, Is not all this, though perfectly correct, well known to be matter of form? Is it not practically the course of events that an engaged contributor writes the article, and sends it to the editor, who admits it as written—substantially, at least? And is it not often very well known, by style and in other ways, who it was wrote the article? ”

“ Persons with nothing but a little geometry have certainly exposed themselves in their modes of objecting to results which require the higher mathematics to be known before an independent opinion can be formed on sufficient grounds. But persons with no geometry at all have done the same thing much more completely.
There is a line to be drawn which is constantly put aside in the arguments held by paradoxers in favor of their right to instruct the world. ”

“ So much for the Royal Society as concerns myself. I must add that there is not a spark of party feeling against those who wilfully remain outside. The better minds of course know better; and the smaller savants look complacently on the idea of an outer world which makes élite of them. I have done such a thing as serve on a committee of the Society, and report on a paper: they had the sense to ask, and I had the sense to see that none of my opinions were compromised by compliance. ”

“ A great many—the mass, indeed—are illiterate, and a great many waste their means, and are in or approaching penury. But I must say that never, in any one instance, has the quadrature of the circle, or the like, been made a pretext for begging; even to be asked to purchase a book is of the very rarest occurrence—it has happened, and that is all.
These discoverers despise one another: if there were the concert among them which there is among foreign mendicants, a man who admitted one to a conference would be plagued to death. ”

“ There are two other ways in which a reviewed author may be wrong about his critic. An editor frequently makes slight insertions or omissions—I mean slight in quantity of type—as he goes over the last proof; this he does in a comparative hurry, and it may chance that he does not know the full sting of his little alteration. ”

“ To a bookish man—I mean a man who can manage to collect books—there is no tax. To myself, for example, 40 pounds worth of books deducted from my shelves, and the life-use of the Society's splendid library instead, would have been a capital exchange. But there may be, and are, men who want books, and cannot pay the Society's price. The Council would be very liberal in allowing books to be consulted. ”

“ New knowledge, when to any purpose, must come by contemplation of old knowledge in every matter which concerns thought; mechanical contrivance sometimes, not very often, escapes this rule. All the men who are now called discoverers, in every matter ruled by thought, have been men versed in the minds of their predecessors, and learned in what had been before them. ”

“ If, then, he can only keep his secret by denial, he has a right to denial. This I admit to be an answer against all men except the denier himself; if conscience and self-respect will allow it, no one can impeach it. ”

“ I daresay what I have written may give some of your readers to understand some of the pericula et commoda of modern journalism. I have known men of deep learning and science as ignorant of the prevailing system as any uneducated reader of a newspaper in a country town. ”

“ Having long been an admirer of De Morgan, having continued his work in the bibliography of early arithmetics, and having worked in his library among the books of which he was so fond, it is possible that the present editor, whatever may be his other shortcomings, may undertake the labor with as much of sympathy as any one who is in a position to perform it. ”

“ Indeed that great man so explains and demonstrates this dogma (although to theologians the word has not much charm) from the immovable foundations of philosophy, that with but few changes and additions a mind sincerely devoted to truth can desire nothing more. ”

“ There are many who have such a deep respect for any attempt at thought that they are shocked at ridicule even of those who have made themselves conspicuous by pretending to lead the world in matters which they have not studied. ”

“ Omissions must sometimes be made when a grievance is too highly spiced. It did once happen to me that a waggish editor made an insertion without notice in a letter signed by me with some fiction, which insertion contained the name of a friend of mine, with a satire which I did not believe, and should not have written if I had. ”