Comments in this direction havealso been made by the physicist David Ruelle, acolleague of Grothendieck’s at the IHES: After asuperhuman effort, Grothendieck had to admitthat he would never be able to complete the oeuvrehe had begun. It was as if he had set his mind onbuilding a cathedral with his own hands. When thewalls were two meters high, he had to stop.

The effect was beautifully suggested by Victor Hugo in a familiar passage in Notre-Dame de Paris (183 1) when the scholar holding his first printed book turns away from his manuscripts, looks a t the cathedral, and says "This will kill that" (Ceci tuera cela). Print also destroyed "the invisible cathedrals of memory." For the printed book made it less nec- essary to shape ideas and things into vivid images and then store them in Memory-places.