=905.= Archimedes was not free from the prevailing notion that geometry was degraded by being employed to produce anything useful. It was with difficulty that he was induced to stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed of those inventions which were the wonder of hostile nations, and always spoke of them slightingly as mere amusements, as trifles in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind after intense application to the higher parts of his science.--MACAULAY. _Lord Bacon; Edinburgh Review, July 1837; Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (New York, 1879), Vol. 1, p. 380._ =906.= Call Archimedes from his buried tomb Upon the plain of vanished Syracuse, And feelingly the sage shall make report How insecure, how baseless in itself, Is the philosophy, whose sway depends On mere material instruments--how weak Those arts, and high inventions, if unpropped By virtue. --WORDSWORTH. _The Excursion._ =907.= Zu Archimedes kam einst ein wissbegieriger Jüngling. “Weihe mich,” sprach er zu ihm, “ein in die göttliche Kunst, Die so herrliche Frucht dem Vaterlande getragen, Und die Mauern der Stadt vor der Sambuca beschützt!” “Göttlich nennst du die Kunst? Sie ists,” versetzte der Weise; “Aber das war sie, mein Sohn, eh sie dem Staat noch gedient. Willst du nur Früchte von ihr, die kann auch die Sterbliche zeugen; Wer um die Göttin freit, suche in ihr nicht das Weib.” --SCHILLER. _Archimedes und der Schüler._ [To Archimedes once came a youth intent upon knowledge. Said he “Initiate me into the Science divine, Which to our country has borne glorious fruits in abundance, And which the walls of the town ’gainst the Sambuca protects.” “Callst thou the science divine? It is so,” the wise man responded; “But so it was, my son, ere the state by her service was blest. Would’st thou have fruit of her only? Mortals with that can provide thee, He who the goddess would woo, seek not the woman in her.”]