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November 15, 1897
Dear Wilhelm,
More frequently, such one-sided letters; they allow me to forget the distance. Therewith you are only doing what I have always done — writing about what you are engrossed in and leaving aside what you cannot react to. Our conversations used to be like that: each in turn began to speak of what he had to say and did not feel obliged to respond to what he had heard.
My capacity to participate fully in your results increases as they reach perfection, the more the law and idea [behind them] shine through. In the as-yet-uninterpreted numbers I as a layman could not find what appears so promising to you; in your present communication I even found some links to fantasies of my own with which at one time I had wanted to illuminate your discoveries (that 12 as a factor of 23 represents the factor 10 of 28, the former having the male character; the latter, the female one). As you will remember, I also started with the approximate identity of the product
12 × 23 = 10 × 28 (period of gestation),
but did not, I admit, know what to do with the difference, which for you became the starting point for further solutions. You surely did not believe that I took those playful attempts seriously or expected you to do so, but I am pleased with the distant relation to your present results.
I can just about imagine the effort it took to let the facts of observation speak in the language of A and P;1 carefully suppress further hunches. Care has been taken to make sure that the communication of results will teach nothing to one in whom no indication of the preceding mental work has remained. I am full of hope that at our next meeting it will be easy for me to understand you.
If you cannot come to Vienna — I am still doing so poorly that I do not dare to take off more than one or one and a half days from work at Christmas, and you know that I am far from philistine parsimoniousness — then we could meet in Graz, Reichenau, or the like. But I hold back my proposals becaus