直觉与潜意识（一） (6-5)

In fact, what is mathematical creation? It does not consist in making new combinations with mathematical entities already known. Anyone could do that, but the combinations so made would be infinite in number and most of them absolutely without interest. To create consists precisely in not making useless combinations and in making those which are useful and which are only a small minority. Invention is discernment, choice.

事实上，什么是数学创造？它不在于用已知的数学实体进行新的组合。任何人都可以这样做，但这样得到的组合在数量上将会是无限的，而且其中的大多数都是我们完全不感兴趣的。创造就是不做无用的组合，而只做那些有用的，这往往只是少数的组合。因此，创造是洞察力和选择。

It is time to penetrate deeper and to see what goes on in the very soul of the mathematician. For this, I believe, I can do best by recalling memories of my own. But I shall limit myself to telling how I wrote my first memoir on Fuchsian functions. I beg the reader's pardon; I am about to use some technical expressions, but they need not frighten him, for he is not obliged to understand them. I shall say, for example, that I have found the demonstration of such a theorem under such circumstances. This theorem will have a barbarous name, unfamiliar to many, but that is unimportant; what is of interest for the psychologist is not the theorem but the circumstances.

现在是时候深入探究，看看在数学家的灵魂深处究竟发生了什么。为此，我相信，通过回顾我的记忆，我能做到最好。但我将仅限于叙述我是如何写出我的第一本关于 Fuchsian 函数的回忆录的。请读者原谅，我将使用一些专业用语，但不必吓唬自己，因为你们不需要去理解它们。例如，我将会说，我已经找到了这个定理在这种情况下的证明，而这个定理有一个吓人的名字，很多人都不熟悉，但这并不重要；心理学家感兴趣的不是定理，而是环境。

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