The conflict at the heart of the Kingdom of Wisdom was a disagreement that had lasted for generations.
King Azaz believed that words were the foundation of all meaning and that numbers were merely decorative.
The Mathemagician believed the opposite with equal passion and equal certainty and equal stubbornness.
Neither king could see that the other's subject was not the enemy but the necessary complement of his own.
Milo, coming from a world where he had ignored both equally, could see the absurdity of the argument clearly.
He had seen what happened when you paid attention to neither — you ended up as bored and empty as he had been.
The answer was not to choose one or the other but to understand that both together made the world coherent.
Words and numbers both matter.

The war between Azaz and the Mathemagician is Juster's satirical portrait of a false and destructive dichotomy.
It mirrors real debates about whether the humanities or the sciences are more important, more rigorous, more necessary.
Both sides in such debates make the same fundamental error — they treat complementary things as competing ones.
Language without mathematics produces beautiful imprecision; mathematics without language produces cold unintelligibility.
Milo understands this not because he is especially wise but because he has been equally indifferent to both.
From his position of detached neutrality he can see what neither passionate partisan is able to see from inside.
The princesses Rhyme and Reason represent exactly this integrating intelligence — the capacity to hold both together.
Their exile is the story's way of showing what happens to a world that insists on choosing sides in a false war.
Words and numbers both matter.