A different image came to me a few weeks ago. The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth or hard marl, resisting penetration... the sea advances insensibly in silence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is so far off you hardly hear it... yet finally it surrounds the resistant substance.
"Episodes in the History of Modern Algebra (1800-1950)". Book edited by Karen Hunger Parshall and Jeremy J. Gray, September 6, 2007.
