Professor Sylvester, the President of Section A at the Exeter Meeting,
gave us a noble vindication of pure mathematics by laying bare, as it
were, the very working of the mathematical mind, and setting before
us, not the array of symbols and brackets which form the armoury of
the mathematician, or the dry results which are only the monuments of
his conquests, but the mathematician himself, with all his human
faculties directed by his professional sagacity to the pursuit,
apprehension, and exhibition of that ideal harmony which he feels to
be the root of all knowledge, the fountain of all pleasure, and the
condition of all action. The mathematician has, above all things, an
eye for symmetry; and Professor Sylvester has not only recognized the
symmetry formed by the combination of his own subject with those of
the former Presidents, but has pointed out the duties of his successor
in the following characteristic note:--
"Mr Spottiswoode favoured the Section, in his opening Address, with a
combined history of the progress of Mathematics and Physics; Dr.
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