The Uncertainty of Analysis

Reiss, Timothy J.

Published by Cornell University Press

Reiss, Timothy J.
The Uncertainty of Analysis: Problems in Truth, Meaning, and Culture.
Cornell University Press, 2018.
Project MUSE. muse.jhu.edu/book/72582.

For additional information about this book

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/72582

[ Access provided at 5 Jul 2022 00:59 GMT from McGill University Libraries ]
It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano,
divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six
letters all in order, then bis splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in
running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it
had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the
whole of England ever reach Q .... But after Q? What comes next?
After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely
visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only
reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R it
would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug bis heels in at Q. Q
he was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q- R-.... He
could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious distinction be-
tween the two classes of meo; on the one hand the steady goers of
superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the
whole alphabet in order, twenty-six letters in all, from start to finish;
on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the
letters together in one flash-the way of genius. He had not genius;
he laid no claim to that: but he had, or might have had, the power to
repeat every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order.
Meanwhile, he stuck at Q. On, then, on to R.
-Virginia Woolf, To the Lightlwuse