Collected Works of Poe | Page 9

as a poet. All fools are poets; this the Prefect feels; and he is merely
guilty of a non distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are
fools."
"But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are two brothers, I know;
and both have attained reputation in letters. The Minister I believe has
written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician,
and no poet."
"You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet and
mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could
not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the
Prefect."
"You surprise me," I said, "by these opinions, which have been
contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to set at
naught the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason
has long been regarded as the reason par excellence."
" 'Il y a à parièr,' " replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, " 'que toute

idée publique, toute convention reçue est une sottise, car elle a
convenue au plus grand nombre.' The mathematicians, I grant you,
have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you
allude, and which is none the less an error for its promulgation as truth.
With an art worthy a better cause, for example, they have insinuated the
term 'analysis' into application to algebra. The French are the
originators of this particular deception; but if a term is of any
importance - if words derive any value from applicability - then
'analysis' conveys 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies
'ambition,' 'religio' 'religion,' or 'homines honesti,' a set of
honorablemen."
"You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "with some of the
algebraists of Paris; but proceed."
"I dispute the availability, and thus the value, of that reason which is
cultivated in any especial form other than the abstractly logical. I
dispute, in particular, the reason educed by mathematical study. The
mathematics are the science of form and quantity; mathematical
reasoning is merely logic applied to observation upon form and
quantity. The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of what
is called pure algebra, are abstract or general truths. And this error is so
egregious that I am confounded at the universality with which it has
been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth.
What is true of relation - of form and quantity - is often grossly false in
regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually
untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry
also the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive it fails; for two
motives, each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value when
united, equal to the sum of their values apart. There are numerous other
mathematical truths which are only truths within the limits of relation.
But the mathematician argues, from his finite truths, through habit, as if
they were of an absolutely general applicability - as the world indeed
imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very learned 'Mythology,' mentions
an analogous source of error, when he says that 'although the Pagan
fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make
inferences from them as existing realities.' With the algebraists,

however, who are Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are believed,
and the inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory, as
through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet
encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal
roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith
that x2+px was absolutely and unconditionally equal to q. Say to one of
these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you please, that you believe
occasions may occur where x2+px is not altogether equal to q, and,
having made him understand what you mean, get out of his reach as
speedily as convenient, for, beyond doubt, he will endeavor to knock
you down.
"I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely laughed at his last
observations, "that if the Minister had been no more than a
mathematician, the Prefect would have been under no necessity of
giving me this check. I know him, however, as both mathematician and
poet, and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with reference to
the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as a
courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I considered, could
not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could
not have failed to anticipate - and events have proved that he did not
fail to anticipate - the waylayings to which he was