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PHILOSOPHY AND FUN OF ALGEBRA Squinting and lolloping crooked are things that it is best to avoid doing much of with any part of one's self.

Moreover, it is bad to spend too many hours over either a microscope or a telescope, or in gazing fixedly at some one-distance range. The eyes need change of focus. So does the imagination.

There has been in modern Europe a shocking riot in mis-use of the imagination. The remedy is to learn to use it. But the same kind of people who would like to bandage a child's eyes lest it should learn to squint, like to bandage the imagination lest it should wear itself out by squinting.

In a school which professes to be conducted on hygienic principles, we have nothing to do with that sort of pessimistic quackery. We use the imagination as freely as the hands and eyes.

But when we come to the end of our arithmetic we do not content ourselves with guesses; we proceed to algebra—that is to say, to dealing logically with the fact of our own ignorance. 38