and the thought of the past. If Euclid were alive to-day (and I dare
say he is) he would not say, "The angles at the base of an isosceles
triangle are equal to one another." He would say, "To me (a very
frail and fallible being, remember) it does somehow seem that these
two angles have a mysterious and awful equality to one another." The
dislike of schoolboys for Euclid is unreasonable in many ways; but
fundamentally it is entirely reasonable. Fundamentally it is the
revolt from a man who was either fallible and therefore (in pretending
to infallibility) an impostor, or infallible and therefore not human.

Now, since it is human to err, it is always in reference to those
things which arouse in us the most human of all our emotions--I mean
the emotion of love--that we conceive the deepest of our errors.
Suppose we met Euclid on Westminster Bridge, and he took us aside and
confessed to us that whilst he regarded parallelograms and rhomboids
with an indifference bordering on contempt, for isosceles triangles he
cherished a wild romantic devotion. Suppose he asked us to accompany
him to the nearest music-shop, and there purchased a guitar in order
that he might worthily sing to us the radiant beauty and the radiant
goodness of isosceles triangles. As men we should, I hope, respect his
enthusiasm, and encourage his enthusiasm, and catch his enthusiasm.
But as seekers after truth we should be compelled to regard with a
dark suspicion, and to check with the most anxious care, every fact
that he told us about isosceles triangles. For adoration involves a
glorious obliquity of vision. It involves more than that. We do not
say of Love that he is short-sighted. We do not say of Love that he
is myopic. We do not say of Love that he is astigmatic. We say quite
simply, Love is blind. We might go further and say, Love is deaf. That
would be a profound and obvious truth. We might go further still and
say, Love is dumb. But that would be a profound and obvious lie. For