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

428 MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
endowed with a strange new gift-a strange new capacity
or power-a strange new energy, let us call it. And it
is in the world today. What is it? We know it partly
by its effects and partly by its stirring within us for as
human beings, as representatives of Man, we all of us
have it in some measure. It is the energy that inventsthat produces instruments, ideas, institutions and doctrines; it is, moreover, the energy that, having invented,
criticizes, then invents again and better, thus advancing
in excellence from creation to creation endlessly. Be good
enough to reflect and to reflect again upon the significance
of those simple words: invents; having invented, criticizes; invents again and better; thus advancing, by creative activity, from stage to stage of excellence without
end. Their sound is familiar; but what of their ultimate
sense? We ought indeed to pause here, withdraw to the
solitude of some cloister and there in the silence meditate
upon their meaning; for they do not describe the life of
beasts; they characterize Man.
We are speaking of a peculiar kind of energy-the
energy that civilizes-that strange familiar energy that
makes possible and makes actual the great creative movement which we call human Progress, of which we talk
much and think but little. Let us scrutinize it more
closely; let us, if we can, lay bare its characteristic relation to Time for its relation to Time is the relation of
Time to the distinctive life of Man.
Compare some representative of the animal world,
a bee, let us say, or a beaver, with a correspondingly
representative man. Consider their achievements and
the ways thereof. The beaver makes a dam; the man,
a bridge or some discovery,-analytical geometry, for
example, or the art of printing, or the Keplerian laws of