"In certain of their aspects, as well as in the attitudes of their practitioners, there is a close analogy between religion and mathematics. To some of its practitioners, religion represents an ideal essentially superpersonal, existing independently of its devotees; to others, it affords rules by which to live, having no intellectual content whatever. And like religion, mathematics traces its beginnings back to prehistoric primitive cultures, as a result of which the numbers with which we count, the so-called "natural numbers"... are frequently regarded in a mystical fashion not ordinarily associated... Also like religion, mathematics furnishes a fascinating study from an anthropological viewpoint, only the meagre beginnings of which are to be found in antropological literature—a gap which I am hoping to help fill..."