"You are referring," I interposed, "to the distress which pupils feel in the time allotted to mathematics. There are actually people of considerable intelligence who seem to be smitten with absolute stupidity when confronted with mathematics, and whose school-life becomes poisoned owing to the torment caused by this subject. There are many cases of living surgeons, lawyers, historians, and litterateurs, who, till late in life, are visited by dreams of their earlier mathematical ordeals. Their horror has a very real foundation, for, whereas the pupil who is bad at Latin yet manages to get an idea of the language, and he who is weak in history has at least a notion of what is being discussed, the one who is unmathematical by nature has to worry his way through numberless lessons in a subject which is entirely incomprehensible to him, as if belonging to another world and being presented to him in a totally strange tongue. He is expected to answer questions, the sense of which he cannot even guess, and to solve problems, every word and every figure of which glares at him like a sphinx of evil omen. Sitting on each side of him are pupils to whom this is merely play, and some of whom could complete the whole of school mathematics within a few months at express rate. This leads to a contrast between the pupils, which may press with tragical force on the unfortunate member throughout his whole school existence. That is why a reform is to be welcomed that sifts out in time those who should be separated from the rest, and which adapts the school curriculum as closely as possible to individual talents."