Have I not tried my hand at many a one--starting, too, no one can deny, with the very minimum of clipping,....

for I suppose one cannot begin lower than at simple "I am I"....

unless--which is equally demonstrable--at "I am not I." I recollect--or dream--that I offered that sweet dream, Hypatia, to deduce all things in heaven and earth, from the Astronomics of Hipparchus to the number of plumes in an archangel's wing, from that one simple proposition, if she would but write me out a demonstration of it first, as some sort of [Greek expression] for the apex of my inverted pyramid.

But she disdained....

People are apt to disdain what they know they cannot do....