The ruling analogy, which is quite false,
must be removed. It is that of the eagle's
eye. The metaphysician imagines that he
surveys the world as with an eagle's eye.
And the farther he flies, the " purer " his
knowledge becomes.
Hence we can see the world as pure
geometry, and can make out its dividing lines.
But the eye is in the mud, the eye is mud.
Formerly, one liked theories because they reduced the world to a single principle. Now the same reason disgusts us.
[...]
Unity is made in the world by drawing squares over it. We are able to get along these at any rate [like a] railway line in desert.
The squares include cinders always cinders.
The same old fallacy persists the desire to introduce a unity in the world :
- (i) The mythologists made it a woman or an elephant :
- (ii) The scientists made fun of the mythologists, but themselves turned the world into the likeness of a mechanical toy.
They were more concerned with models than with woman (woman troubled them and hence their particular form of anthropomorphism).
One analogy is as good as another. The truth remains that the world is not any unity, but a house in the cinders.
All is flux. The moralists, the capital
letterists, attempt to find a framework out-
side the flux, a solid bank for the river, a
pier rather than a raft. Truth is what helps
a particular sect in the general flow.
