“Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think- as long as they don't seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste.”

“Are you an atheist?""Oh no, I honor all the gods.""And how many belong to that all?""Countless. And one.""How meaningless!""'Oliness, let me hear you count to one.""One.""Point at that one."Brownpony stirred restlessly. Finally he tapped his index finger against his temple.Wooshin laughed quietly. "Wrong. You had to think about it too long. And you didn't count to one. You counted from one and stopped. The one is countless.”

“Now a Dark Age seemed to be passing. For twelve centuries, a small flame of knowledge had been kept smoldering in the monasteries; only now were there minds ready to be kindled. Long ago, during the last age of reason, certain proud thinkers had claimed that valid knowledge was indestructible—that ideas were deathless and truth immortal. But that was true only in the subtlest sense, the abbot thought, and not superficially true at all. There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the nonmoral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God's and not Man's, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind and speech and culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they became valid in a human sense within the culture. For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, only in the objective logos of Nature and the ineffable Logos of God. Truth could be crucified; but soon, perhaps, a resurrection.”

“The dead must humor the mourners, he thought, and the sick must comfort the visitors. It was always so.”

“It is said that water is for cattle and farmers, that milk is for children and blood for men.”

“The captain looked defensive. "You regard our customs as primitive?"Every society to its own tastes, captain. The wisdom of one society would be folly for another. Who is qualified to judge? Only the universe, which passes the judgment of survival on all peoples.”

“When there was fear, men huddled in small groups and counted their friends on their fingers, and all else was Foe. ”