Theory Attracts Practice As The Magnet Attracts

I Confess That Fermat's Theorem As An Isolated Proposition Has Very Little Interest For Me, Because I Could Easily Lay Down A Multitude Of Such Propositions, Which One Could Neither Prove Nor Dispose Of.

I Mean The Word Proof Not In The Sense Of The Lawyers, Who Set Two Half Proofs Equal To A Whole One, But In The Sense Of A Mathematician, Where Half Proof = 0, And It Is Demanded For Proof That Every Doubt Becomes Impossible.

The Enchanting Charms Of This Sublime Science Reveal Only To Those Who Have The Courage To Go Deeply Into It.

I Protest Against The Use Of Infinite Magnitude ..., Which Is Never Permissible In Mathematics.

I Am Coming More And More To The Conviction That The Necessity Of Our Geometry Cannot Be Demonstrated, At Least Neither By, Nor For, The Human Intellect. . . Geometry Should Be Ranked, Not With Arithmetic, Which Is Purely Aprioristic, But With Mechanics.