So it is with geometry. We study it because we derive pleasure from contact with a great and ancient body of learning that has occupied the attention of master minds during the thousands of years in which it has been perfected, and we are uplifted by it. To deny that our pupils derive this pleasure from the study is to confess ourselves poor teachers, for most pupils do have positive enjoyment in the pursuit of geometry, in spite of the tradition that leads them to proclaim a general dislike for all study. This enjoyment is partly that of the game,--the playing of a game that can always be won, but that cannot be won too easily. It is partly that of the aesthetic, the pleasure of symmetry of form, the delight of fitting things together. But probably it lies chiefly in the mental uplift that geometry brings, the contact with absolute truth, and the approach that one makes to the Infinite. We are not quite sure of any one thing in biology; our knowledge of geology is relatively very slight, and the economic laws of society are uncertain to every one except some individual who attempts to set them forth; but before the world was fashioned the square on the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides of a right triangle, and it will be so after this world is dead; and the inhabitant of Mars, if he exists, probably knows its truth as we know it. The uplift of this contact with absolute truth, with truth eternal, gives pleasure to humanity to a greater or less degree, depending upon the mental equipment of the particular individual; but it probably gives an appreciable amount of pleasure to every student of geometry who has a teacher worthy of the name.--SMITH, D. E. _The Teaching of Geometry (Boston, 1911), p. 16._