affinity to them.

And how, may I ask, has it become a part of my genius? Simply because
nature, of which I am a part, and to which all my ideas must refer if
they are to be relevant to my destiny, happens to have mathematical
form. Nature had to have some form or other, if it was to exist at
all; and whatever form it had happened to take would have had its
prior place in the realm of essence, and its essential and logical
relations there. That particular part of the realm of essence which
nature chances to exemplify or to suggest is the part that may be
revealed to me, and that is the predestined focus of all my
admirations. Essence as such has no power to reveal itself, or to take
on existence; and the human mind has no power or interest to trace all
essence. Even the few essences which it has come to know, it cannot
undertake to examine exhaustively; for there are many features
nestling in them, and many relations radiating from them, which no
one needs or cares to attend to. The implications which logicians and
mathematicians actually observe in the terms they use are a small
selection from all those that really obtain, even in their chosen
field; so that, for instance, as Mr. Russell was telling us, it was
only the other day that Cantor and Dedekind observed that although
time continually eats up the days and years, the possible future
always remains as long as it was before. This happens to be a fact
interesting to mankind. Apart from the mathematical puzzles it may
help to solve, it opens before existence a vista of perpetual youth,
and the vital stress in us leaps up in recognition of its inmost
ambition. Many other things are doubtless implied in infinity which,
if we noticed them, would leave us quite cold; and still others, no
doubt, are inapprehensible with our sort and degree of intellect.
There is of course nothing in essence which an intellect postulated