of the future.
Arithmetic
Progress in arithmetic has been much slower than in algebra and analysis, and it is easy to see why. The feeling of continuity is a precious guide which the arithmetician lacks; each whole number is separated from the others—it has, so to speak, its own individuality. Each of them is a sort of exception and this is why general theorems are rarer in the theory of numbers; this is also why those which exist are more hidden and longer elude the searchers.
If arithmetic is behind algebra and analysis, the best thing for it to do is to seek to model itself upon these sciences so as to profit by their advance. The arithmetician ought therefore to take as guide the analogies with algebra. These analogies are numerous and if, in many cases, they have not yet been studied sufficiently closely to become utilizable, they at least have long been foreseen, and even the language of the two sciences shows they have been recognized. Thus we speak of transcendent numbers and thus we account for the future classification of these numbers already having as model the classification of transcendent functions, and still we do not as yet very well see how to pass from one classification to the other; but had it been seen, it would already have been accomplished and would no longer be the work of the future.
The first example that comes to my mind is the theory of congruences, where is found a perfect parallelism to the theory of algebraic equations. Surely we shall succeed in completing this parallelism, which must hold for instance between the theory of algebraic curves and that of congruences with two variables. And when the problems relative to congruences with several variables shall be solved, this will be a first step toward the solution of many questions of indeterminate analysis.
Algebra
The theory of algebraic equations will still long hold the attention of geometers; numerous and very