Delight Springs

Saturday, May 6, 2023

Hash

I never tire of revisiting WJ's philosophical self-reproach. All truth-seekers should reflect on it, continually,

"I am convinced that the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease. It has contracted an alliance lately in me with a feverish personal ambition, which I never had before, and which I recognize as an unholy thing in such a connexion. I actually dread to die until I have settled the Universe's hash in one more book, which shall be epoch-machend at last, and a title of honor to my children! Childish idiot—as if formulas about the Universe could ruffle its majesty, and as if the common-sense world and its duties were not eternally the really real!"

— The Letters of William James, Vol. II by William James
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