Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

198 MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
being is perfect, invariable, divine." One need not be a
Plato, to know, as I have elsewhere said, "that by a
faculty of imaginative, mystical, idealizing discernment
there is revealed to us, amid the fleeting beauties of Time,
the immobile presence of Eternal beauties, immutable
archetypes and source of the grace and loveliness beheld
in the shifting scenes of the flowing world of sense."
These archetypes,-perfect, unbegotten, everlasting,these are the invariants which it is the aim and the
function of art to discern and to represent.
It seems unnecessary to argue here that what has been
said respecting the motivity of natural science and the
like motivity of art is, mutatis mutandis, equally valid in
education, in jurisprudence, in political science, in economics, in philosophy, and in religion, for the sufficient
evidence is not far to seek and you have, I trust, an ample
clue.
And so we are led to a grave and impressive thesisa thesis regarding the principle which unites all the great
forms of human endeavor. The thesis is that the unifying
principle,-the central binding thread of human history,the tie of comradeship among the spiritual enterprises of
man,-is passion and search for things eternal: the thesis
is that quest of invariance,-quest of abiding reality,-is
itself the sovereign invariant in the changeful life of reason.
You are students of philosophy-students of the life of
reason. To you, therefore, with the utmost confidence
I commend the thesis as worthy of your best attention.
As you meditate upon it, there will arise within you the
bright vision of a great and inspiring task-a task that
has not been performed nor even essayed. I mean the
writing of A Critical History of Thought Viewed as the
Quest of Invariance in a Fluctuant World. Taking
Thought in its widest sense, embracing all the cardinal