the mystic must be steadily told,Γ’β¬βAll that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,Γ’β¬βuniversal signs, instead of these village symbols,Γ’β¬βand we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language.
β Ralph Waldo Emerson
languagemysticismreligion