Talk With M. Hermite. He Never Evokes

It Is By Logic That We Prove, But By Intuition That We Discover. To Know How To Criticize Is Good, To Know How To Create Is Better.

Most Striking At First Is The Appearance Of Sudden Illumination, A Manifest Sign Of Long Unconscious Prior Work.

It Is By Logic We Prove. It Is By Intuition We Discover.

This Harmony That Human Intelligence Believes It Discovers In Nature - Does It Exist Apart From That Intelligence? No, Without Doubt, A Reality Completely Independent Of The Spirit Which Conceives It, Sees It Or Feels It, Is An Impossibility. A World So Exterior As That, Even If It Existed, Would Be Forever Inaccessible To Us. But What We Call Objective Reality Is, In The Last Analysis, That Which Is Common To Several Thinking Beings, And Could Be Common To All; This Common Part, We Will See, Can Be Nothing But The Harmony Expressed By Mathematical Laws.

Mathematics Has A Threefold Purpose. It Must Provide An Instrument For The Study Of Nature. But This Is Not All: It Has A Philosophical Purpose, And, I Daresay, An Aesthetic Purpose.