Would it sound too presumptuous to speak of perception as a quintessence of sensation, language (that is, communicable thought) [as that] of perception, mathematics [as that] of language? We should then have four terms differentiating from inorganic matter and from each other: the Vegetable, Animal, Rational, and Supersensual models of existence.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume, 2), Presidential Address to the British Association (p. 652)