Article May 22, 1909 Issue

MATHEMATICS AND SPIRITUAL PROGRESS

WILHELM SEGERBLOM

Many a beginner in Christian Science finds it difficult to grasp the conception of the infinity of Life, Truth, and Love; in other words, the conception of the allness of God. The writer has been helped to grasp this concept by a thought of mathematical relations, and he ventures to speak of it with the hope that it may be of help to others.

The student of arithmetic often indicates a case of division by the use of a common fraction, putting as the numerator the number to be divided, and as the denominator, the divisor. He gets as many common fractions as he has cases of division. When he advances to the study of algebra and uses the letters a, b, c, etc., instead of actual numbers, he still finds that he can indicate a case of division by a common fraction. For instance, if he wishes to divide some definite number that for the moment is represented by a by some other definite number that for the moment is represented by b, he uses the fractional form, a/b, and this means as much to him as did the fractions he manipulated in arithmetic.

Let us look at our algebraic fraction closely. Suppose in a given case a equals 100 and b equals 50; the answer of course is 2. Now suppose that a remains constantly 100 but that b changes gradually; if b equals 25 the answer is 4; if b equals 10 the value of the fraction is 10; if 5, the value is 20. It will be readily seen that, given a constant numerator, as the denominator decreases the value of the fraction increase. When b equals I the value of the fraction is 100, and as b gets still smaller, i.e., less than I, and approaches zero, the value of the fraction increases and is now more than 100; for instance, if b equals 0.5, the value of the fraction is 200. It can easily be proved by the theory of variables and limits that as b approaches zero the value of the fraction gets larger and larger, and reaches infinity when b reaches zero.