No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Presidential Address: Mathematics and Individuality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2017
Extract
In the ancient story of Barlaam and Ioasaph, which edified and delighted our medieval forefathers through many centuries, there is a charming apologue of a fowler and a nightingale whom the former had snared and was about to slay. “Free me from my fetters,” said the nightingale, “and I will give thee three precepts by the keeping of which thou shalt be greatly benefited all thy life long.” The astonished fowler accepted the terms and set the bird free, receiving as his reward the precepts : “Never try to attain to the unattainable; never regret the thing past and gone; and never believe the word that passes belief.” But as the bird flew aloft she cried to her captor, “Shame, sir, on thy recklessness! What a treasure thou hast lost to-day! For I have inside me a pearl larger than an ostrich egg.” When the fowler heard this he was distraught and would fain have taken her again. “Come hither,” he said, “into my house; I will make thee right welcome, and send thee forth with honour.” But the nightingale replied, “Now I know thee to be a mighty fool. Though thou didst receive my words readily and gladly, thou hast gained no profit thereby. I bade thee never regret the thing past and gone; and behold thou art distraught with grief because I am escaped out of thy hands. I charged thee not to try to attain to the unattainable; and thou triest to catch me again. Besides which I bade thee never believe a word past belief; and behold thou hast believed that I had in me a pearl exceeding the size of my whole body.”
- Type
- Other
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Mathematical Association 1918
References
page 188 note * I condense it from the translation by Woodward and Mattingly in the Loeb Classical Library.
page 191 note * Also, perhaps, the aspiration of Anatole France: “Espérons dans ces êtres inconcevables qui sortiront un jour de l’homme, comme l’homme est sorti de la brute. Saluons ces gënies futurs!”—Le jardin d’épicure.
page 192 note * The acute reader will notice that our advocate has avoided by far the most difficult question: namely, whether society (or, to be precise, the state) may not at times of crisis demand from its members services that entail the supersession, even the final sacrifice, of their individual development, and whether an affirmative answer would not greatly weaken the general force of his argument. To this we may imagine him to reply that mankind is not condemned for ever to endure its present evils ; if there is a will to escape from them, its nobler spirits (“Saluons ces génies futurs!”) will certainly find a way. But if it is lawful to dream of a world in which the good of all would be much more nearly the good of each than it is at present, it is lawful to do whatever may help to meke the dream reality. What, then, could education do better than to strengthen men’s sense of the worth of individuality—their own and others’,—teaohing them to esteem the individual life, not, indeed, as a private possession, but as the only means by which real value can enter into the world? In this, it may be claimed, is the strongest bulwark of freedom and the firmest guarantee against the rule of violence.
page 196 note * Mr. Shaw has devoted one of his formidable “prefaces” to an acute and eloquent discussion of the main topic of this address: “Parents and Children,” in the volume of plays entitled Misalliance.