To admire is, to me, questionless, the highest pleasure of life. - William Rowan Hamilton

With a view to summon myself to the search for a science of mathematics in general, I asked myself... what precisely was the meaning of this word mathematics, and why arithmetic and geometry only, and not also astronomy, music, optics, mechanics, and so many other sciences, should be considered as forming a part of it; for it is not enough here to know the etymology of the word. In reality the word mathematics meaning nothing but science, those which I have just named have as much right as geometry to be called mathematics; and nevertheless there is no one, however little instructed, who cannot distinguish at once what belongs to mathematics... from what belongs to the other sciences. But... all the sciences which have for their end investigations concerning order and measure, are related to mathematics, it being of small importance whether this measure be sought in numbers, forms, stars, sounds, or any other object; that, accordingly, there ought to exist a general science which should explain all that can be known about order and measure, considered independently of any application to a particular subject, and that, indeed, this science has its own proper name, consecrated by long usage, to wit, mathematics...

This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes their being under the presidency of law. Man is now seen to be an enigma only as an individual; in the mass he is a mathematical problem.

Our epoch is the epoch of increasing consciousness; in this field Mathematics has done its bit. It has made us conscious of the limits of its own capabilities.