Follow Quotes (2)
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
In Richard Alan Krieger, Civilization's Quotations: Life's Ideal (2002), 6. Although this source, and a number of others, attribute the quote to Ralph Waldo Emerson, none that the webmaster found have a citation, and a number of other sources treat it as anonymous. Thus, the webmaster references Emerson with doubt. If you know a definitive primary print source, please contact the webmaster.
I see with much pleasure that you are working on a large work on the integral Calculus [ ... ] The reconciliation of the methods which you are planning to make, serves to clarify them mutually, and what they have in common contains very often their true metaphysics; this is why that metaphysics is almost the last thing that one discovers. The spirit arrives at the results as if by instinct; it is only on reflecting upon the route that it and others have followed that it succeeds in generalising the methods and in discovering its metaphysics.
Letter to S. F. Lacroix, 1792. Quoted in S. F. Lacroix, Traité du calcul differentiel et du calcul integral (1797), Vol. 1, xxiv, trans. Ivor Grattan-Guinness.
See also: | Calculus (12) | Instinct (13) | Integration (6) | Metaphysics (12) | Method (12) | Pleasure (18) | Spirit (9)
