division of an army or as a great civil administrator directs from his central office diverse and scattered but related groups of interests and operations; then, I say, the current opinion that devotion to mathematics unfits the devotee for practical affairs should be known for false on _a priori_ grounds. And one should be thus prepared to find that as a fact Gaspard Monge, creator of descriptive geometry, author of the classic “Applications de l’analyse à la géométrie”; Lazare Carnot, author of the celebrated works, “Géométrie de position,” and “Réflections sur la Métaphysique du Calcul infinitesimal”; Fourier, immortal creator of the “Théorie analytique de la chaleur”; Arago, rightful inheritor of Monge’s chair of geometry; Poncelet, creator of pure projective geometry; one should not be surprised, I say, to find that these and other mathematicians in a land sagacious enough to invoke their aid, rendered, alike in peace and in war, eminent public service.--KEYSER, C. J. _Lectures on Science, Philosophy and Art (New York, 1908), pp. 32-33._ =824.= If in Germany the goddess _Justitia_ had not the unfortunate habit of depositing the ministerial portfolios only in the cradles of her own progeny, who knows how many a German mathematician might not also have made an excellent minister. --PRINGSHEIM, A. _Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung, Bd. 13 (1904), p. 372._ =825.= We pass with admiration along the great series of mathematicians, by whom the science of theoretical mechanics has been cultivated, from the time of Newton to our own. There is no group of men of science whose fame is higher or brighter. The great discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, had fixed all eyes on those portions of human knowledge on which their successors employed their labors. The certainty belonging to this line of speculation seemed to elevate mathematicians above the students of other subjects; and the beauty of mathematical relations and the subtlety of intellect which may be shown in dealing with them, were fitted to win unbounded applause. The successors of Newton and the Bernoullis, as Euler, Clairaut, D’Alembert, Lagrange, Laplace, not to introduce living names, have been some of the most remarkable men of talent which the world has seen.--WHEWELL, W. _History of the Inductive Sciences, Vol. 1, Bk. 4, chap. 6, sect. 6._