Madam, I have just come from a country where people are hanged if they talk. - Leonhard Euler

Till now the mathematicians tried in vain to discover some order in the sequence of the prime numbers and we have every reason to believe that there is some mystery which the human mind shall never penetrate. To convince oneself, one has only to glance at the tables of primes which some people took the trouble to compute beyond a hundred thousand, and one perceives that there is no order and no rule. This is so much more surprising as the arithmetic gives us definite rules with the help of which we can continue the sequence of the primes as far as we please, without noticing, however, the least trace of order.

Quanquam nobis in intima naturae mysteria penetrare, indeque veras caussas Phaenomenorum agnoscere neutiquam est concessum: tamen evenire potest, ut hypothesis quaedam ficta pluribus phaenomenis explicandis aeque satisfaciat, ac si vera caussa nobis esset perspecta.

Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena.