Somehow One Can Never Manage To Be

Men Can Construct A Science With Very Few Instruments, Or With Very Plain Instruments; But No One On Earth Could Construct A Science With Unreliable Instruments. A Man Might Work Out The Whole Of Mathematics With A Handful Of Pebbles, But Not With A Handful Of Clay Which Was Always Falling Apart Into New Fragments, And Falling Together Into New Combinations. A Man Might Measure Heaven And Earth With A Reed, But Not With A Growing Reed.

This Is The Perpetual And Pitiful Tragedy Of The Practical Man In Practical Affairs. He Always Begins With A Flourish Of Contempt For What He Calls Theorizing And What People Who Can Do It Call Thinking. He Will Not Wait For Logic-that Is, In The Most Exact Sense, He Will Not Listen To Reason. It Will Therefore Appear To Him An Idle And Ineffectual Proceeding To Say That There Is A Reason For His Present Failure. Nevertheless, It May Be Well To Say It, And To Try And Make It Clear Even To Him.

We Talk Of Wild Animals But Man Is The Only Wild Animal. It Is Man That Has Broken Out. All Other Animals Are Tame Animals; Following The Rugged Respectability Of The Tribe Or Type.

Comradeship Is Quite A Different Thing From Friendship. . .

Our Civilization Has Decided That Determining The Guilt Or Innocence Of Men Is A Thing Too Important To Be Trusted To Trained Men. When It Wants A Library Catalogued, Or The Solar System Discovered, Or Any Trifle Of That Kind, It Uses Up Its Specialists. But When It Wishes Anything Done Which Is Really Serious, It Collects Twelve Of The Ordinary Men Standing Round. The Same Thing Was Done, If I Remember Right, By The Founder Of Christianity.