"Oh
WRETCHED race of men, to space confined!
What honour can ye pay to him, whose mind
To that which lies beyond hath penetrated?
The symbols he hath formed shall sound his praise,
And lead him on through unimagined ways
To conquests new, in worlds not yet created.
First, ye
Determinants! In ordered row
And massive column ranged, before him go,
To form a phalanx for his safe protection.
Ye powers of the nth roots of - 1!
Around his head in ceaseless cycles run,
As unembodied spirits of direction.
And you, ye
undevelopable scrolls!
Above the host wave your emblazoned rolls,
Ruled for the record of his bright inventions.
Ye cubic surfaces! By threes and nines
Draw round his camp your seven-and-twenty lines-
The seal of Solomon in three dimensions.
March on,
symbolic host! With step sublime,
Up to the flaming bounds of Space and Time!
There pause, until by Dickenson depicted,
In two dimensions, we the form may trace
Of him whose soul, too large for vulgar space,
In n dimensions flourished unrestricted."
"My soul
is an entangled knot,
Upon a liquid vortex wrought
By Intellect in the Unseen residing.
And thine doth like a convict sit,
With
marlinspike untwisting it,
Only to find its knottiness abiding;
Since all the tool for its untying
In four-dimensional space are lying."
-- James
Clerk Maxwell
-- 1887
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