signs are an extremely personal language that we develop throughout our lives, by trial and error, until we begin to understand that God is guiding us.
The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.
Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as 'conceptual necessities,' etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors.
The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.
What is this self-inside us, this silent observer, severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us, and urge us onto futile activity, and in the end, judge us still more severely for the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?
Truths ... are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.
Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet everyday posed and baffled by trivial questions at his own supper table.
For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.