"Water, water everywhere, And not a drop to drink."
Not one opinion of any other man is referred to, in the way of agreement or of opposition. Not even a town is mentioned: there is nothing which brings a capital letter into the middle of a sentence, except, by the rarest accident, such a personification as _Justice_. A likely book to want an _Edimbourg_ godfather!
Saint-Martin is great in mathematics. The number _four_ essentially belongs to straight lines, and _nine_ to curves. The object of a straight line is to perpetuate _ad infinitum_ the production of a point from which it emanates. A circle [circle] bounds the production of all its radii, tends to destroy them, and is in some sort their enemy. How is it possible that things so distinct should not be distinguished in their _number_ as well as in their action? If this important observation had been made earlier, immense trouble would have been saved to the mathematicians, who would have been prevented from searching for a common measure to lines which have nothing in common. But, though all straight lines have the number _four_, it must not be supposed that they are all equal, for a line is the result of its law and { 170} its number; but though both are the same for all lines of a sort, they act differently, as to force, energy, and duration, in different individuals; which explains all differences of length, etc. I congratulate the reader who understands this; and I do not pity the one who does not.
Saint-Martin and his works are now as completely forgotten as if they had never been born, except so far as this, that some one may take up one of the works as of heretical character, and lay it down in disappointment, with the reflection that it is as dull as orthodoxy. For a person who was once in some vogue, it would be difficult to pick out a more fossil writer, from Aa to Zypoeus, except,--though it is unusual for (,--) to represent an interval of more than a year--his unknown opponent. This opponent, in the very year of the _Des Erreurs_ ... published a book in two parts with the same fictitious place of printing;
Tableau Naturel des Rapports qui existent entre Dieu, l'Homme, et l'Univers. A Edimbourg, 1782, 8vo.[376]