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

320 MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
wit, and this is a price that the vast majority of "educated" laymen are unwilling to pay; their interest in scientific ideas is neither steady nor deep; the ideas they acquire
are such as can be taken, so to speak, on the fly, not such
as require to be pursued and pondered; amusement is
preferred to instruction; it is easier to read newspapers
or novels or history of the romantic type or even philosophy of the verbalistic variety than to acquire solid
knowledge; it is easier to feel the galvanic effect of a
poem than to discern the beauty and feel the inspiration
of a scientific work; and far easier to acquire the lighter
lingo of knowledge sufficient for the dabbling conversation of a "smoker" or an afternoon tea than it is to think
and to know. What I have just now said requires an
important qualification,-the public's interest in science
can be greatly improved if those who are expert in a
branch of science will teach those who are not,-but such
teaching has been very slight.
1 have just now alluded to "precision of thought"
and "the exercise of wit"-"genuine" wit. Perhaps you
will allow me to digress a little in this connection. A
short while ago I read a review, by a distinguished man
of letters, of Professor George Santayana's Oharacter
and Opinion in the United States. The reviewer tells us
that the work has, besides other excellences, the qualities
of precision, wit, and beauty. I have read much of Santayana's writing, including the poems and the five volumes
of The Life of Reason. Undoubtedly, his writing is
beautiful-that is why I have read it-and it is bright,
too, sparkling, and full of surprises; perhaps we may say
that it has, in one sense of the term, wit also; to me its
wit appears to be scintillation rather than genuine wit for
in this latter there is an element of gravity which Santa