The vision of knowledge of which I speak is seen not with the eyes, but with the mind.
All the magnificence of the heavens is but the embroidery of a copy which falls far short of the divine Original, and teaches nothing about the absolute harmonies or motions of things.

Their beauty is like the beauty of figures drawn by the hand of Daedalus or any other great artist, which may be used for illustration, but no mathematician would seek to obtain from them true conceptions of equality or numerical relations.

How ridiculous then to look for these in the map of the heavens, in which the imperfection of matter comes in everywhere as a disturbing element, marring the symmetry of day and night, of months and years, of the sun and stars in their courses.

Only by problems can we place astronomy on a truly scientific basis.

Let the heavens alone, and exert the intellect.
Still, mathematics admit of other applications, as the Pythagoreans say, and we agree.