PHILOSOPHY AND FUN OF ALGEBRA
at the beginning. They are all tied by the same hypothesis:—that everybody lives under water. It is a very good working hypothesis for them; for if one of them got out of the water it would die. If they knew algebra properly, they would understand that water is only their present working hypothesis, and that it is quite possible there may be people who live out of it. But it is not sure that they do know enough algebra to be aware of their own ignorance.
If you watch them carefully, you will some day see a wiggler come out of the water. He has got wings. The water-hypothesis no longer concerns him. Some link in the chain that bound him down to water has opened; he is set free; Infinity has come to him.
That is what happened to Isaiah when he got out of the kind of Mosaism by which such people as Joshua and Samuel were tied down. That is what will happen to you (if you learn your algebra properly) when you are no longer tied down to a, b,c, and √-1, as the values of x; and learn to
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