Page:Philosophy and Fun of Algebra.djvu/48

PHILOSOPHY AND FUN OF ALGEBRA object of either fun, vanity, or gossip. The vision which you see may quite harmlessly and legitimately become a source of fun to yourself and your friends at some future time, but take care never to gossip or joke about it until it has passed from the condition of imaginative vision to that of working hypothesis. But the most important precaution of all is incessant reverence for the Great Unknown, the sacred x: or, in other words, a constant awareness of your own ignorance.

Remember always that Genius means conscientious, careful work on suggestions of the imagination taken as provisional hypotheses.

To take suggestions of the Imagination as fact is Insanity. When you hear of a man that he has unquestionable genius but is a little mad, that means that he sometimes takes the products of his imagination as working hypotheses, but sometimes mistakes them for facts.

All the above precautions may be summed up in one sentence: Remember that the more active the imagination is, the less the physical and moral 44