Well, then, the ovum, the egg, is, to speak in human phrase, the
Creator's more private and sacred studio, for his magnum opus. Now, look
at a hen's egg, which is a convenient one to study, because it is large
enough and built solidly enough to look at and handle easily. That would
be the form I would choose for my thinking-cell. Build me an oval with
smooth, translucent walls, and put me in the centre of it with Newton's
"Principia" or Kant's "Kritik," and I think I shall develop "an eye for
an equation," as you call it, and a capacity for an abstraction.
But do tell me,--said the Astronomer, a little incredulously,--what there
is in that particular form which is going to help you to be a
mathematician or a metaphysician?
--It is n't help I want, it is removing hindrances. I don't want to see
anything to draw off my attention. I don't want a cornice, or an angle,
or anything but a containing curve. I want diffused light and no single
luminous centre to fix my eye, and so distract my mind from its one
object of contemplation. The metaphysics of attention have hardly been
sounded to their depths. The mere fixing the look on any single object
for a long time may produce very strange effects. Gibbon's well-known
story of the monks of Mount Athos and their contemplative practice is
often laughed over, but it has a meaning.
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