A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume IIDe Morgan, Augustus
Philosophy
A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II
De Morgan, Augustus
Circle-squaring; Perpetual motion; Science -- Miscellanea; Trisection of angle
Nor will they be anonymous. Since I wrote the above, I have received
_onymous_ letters, as _ominous_ as the rest. The writer, William Thorn,
M.D., is obliged to reveal {159} himself, since it is his object to prove
that he himself is one 666. By using W for double Vau (or 12) he cooks the
number out of his own name. But he says it is the number not of a beast but
of a man, and adds, "Thereby hangs a tale!" which sounds like
contradiction. He informs me that he will talk the matter over with me: but
I shall certainly have nothing to say to a gentleman of his number; it is
best to keep on the safe side.
In one letter I am informed that not a line should I have had, but for my
"sneer at 666," which, therefore, I am well pleased to have given. I am
also told that my name means the "'garden of death,' that place in which
the tree of knowledge was plucked, and so you are like your name 'dead' to
the fact that you are an Israelite, like those in Ezekiel 37 ch." Some
hints are given that I shall not fare well in the next world, which any one
who reads the chapter in Ezekiel will see is quite against his comparison.
The reader must not imagine that my prognosticator means _Morgan_ to be a
corruption of _Mortjardin_; he proves his point by Hebrew: but any
philologist would tell him the true derivation of the name, and how
_Glamorgan_ came to get it. It will be of much comfort to those young men
who have not got through to know that the tree of knowledge itself was once
in the same case. And so good bye to 666 for the present, and the
assumption that the enigma is to be solved by the united numeral forces of
the letters of a word.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account