Some important view is expressed, it may be original or only
revived; sooner or later it receives recognition; fellow workers spring
up; the outcome of it finds its way into the schools; it is taught and
handed down; and we observe, unhappily, that it does not in the least
matter whether the view be true or false. In either case its course is
the same; in either case it comes in the end to be a mere phrase, a
lifeless word stamped on the memory.

519

First let a man teach himself, and then he will be taught by others.

520

Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient
understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in
their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words. We may surmise, or
even see quite well, that such theories are make-shifts; but do not
passion and party-spirit love a make-shift at all times? And rightly,
too, because they stand in so much need of it.

521

It is difficult to know how to treat the errors of the age. If a man
oppose them, he stands alone; if he surrender to them, they bring him
neither joy nor credit.

522

There are some hundred Christian sects, every one of them acknowledging
God and the Lord in its own way, without troubling themselves further
about one another. In the study of nature, nay, in every study, things
must of necessity come to the same pass. For what is the meaning of
every one speaking of toleration, and trying to prevent others from
thinking and expressing themselves after their own fashion?

523

To communicate knowledge by means of analogy appears to me a process
equally useful and pleasant. The analogous case is not there to force
itself on the attention or prove anything; it offers a comparison with
some other case, but is not in union with it. Several analogous cases do
not join to form a seried row: they are like good society, which always
suggests more than it grants.

524

To err is to be as though truth did not exist. To lay bare the error to
oneself and others is retrospective discovery.

525

With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be
organised afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new
maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.

526

When we find facts within our knowledge exhibited by some new method, or
even, it may be, described in a foreign language, they receive a
peculiar charm of novelty and wear a fresh air.

527

If two masters of th