"When we consider... peculiarities of mental constitution, reflect upon the nature of the intellectual matrix which brought forth mathematics as a science, and call to mind that universally, and at all times, curious superstitions and extravagant notions appear to have been associated with ideas of number, the hypothesis not unnaturally suggests itself that even now the philosophy of mathematics may not wholly have freed itself from mystical implication. ...it may be that all ratiocinative processes, no matter what the subject, in which the current and continual substitution of symbols (of any kind) for concepts is a prime condition of the effective conduct of the process, are provocative of that attitude of mind. ...and I incline to think that not infrequently the more gifted is the individual for the prosecution of purely symbolic trains of thought the greater is the provocation to this mental attitude."