Longfellow1, in the story of the schoolmaster, says, “There is something divine in the science of numbers. Like God, it holds the sea in the hollow of its hand. It measures the earth; it weighs the stars; it illumines the universe; it is law, it is order, it is beauty,” and the master goes on to say, “and yet we imagine—that is, most of us—that its highest end and culminating point is bookkeeping by double entry. It is our way of teaching it that makes it so prosaic.”