I was once shown a statement made by an eminent mathematician of Cambridge from which one would conclude that this mathematician thought that finite distances became infinite when they were great enough. In one of those splendidly printed books, bound in blue, published by the University Press, and sold at about a guinea as a guide to some advanced branch of pure mathematics, one may read, even in the second edition published in 1900, the words: “Representation [of a complex variable] on a plane is obviously more effective for points at a finite distance from the origin than for points at a very great distance.”

Plainly some of the points at a very great distance are at a finite distance, for the same author mentions that Neumann’s sphere for representing the positions of points on a plane “has the advantage ... of exhibiting the uniqueness of z = 8 as a value of the variable.”

CHAPTER XXXI