ABSTRACT
One of the salient aspects of Lagrange’s work was the almost mystical manner in which certain key ingredients were introduced. In today’s parlance, it might be said that “he did it with mirrors (or with smoke).” Perhaps a better form might be, in agreement with his national tongue, “C ’est un mystere!” Without a doubt, there are elements of both the Lagrangean mechanics and the Lagrangean optimization methods which are metaphysical, or perhaps one should say, in this case, metamechanical.
