Examined point by point, and word by word, the most discriminating
intellects have been able to discern no train of thoughts in the
process of reasoning, which does not conduct inevitably to the
conclusion which has been stated.

What follows from the admission? It establishes no new truth, it
gives us no additional insight into our hidden nature, neither its
action nor itself. Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build,
has much work yet remaining, as pioneer for the overgrowth of ages.
It makes one step towards this object; it destroys error, and the
roots of error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the
reformer in political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy.
It reduces the mind to that freedom in which it would have acted,
but for the misuse of words and signs, the instruments of its own
creation. By signs, I would be understood in a wide sense, including
what is properly meant by that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In
this latter sense, almost all familiar objects are signs, standing,
not for themselves, but for others, in their capacity of suggesting
one thought which shall lead to a train of thoughts. Our whole life
is thus an education of error.

Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct and
intense apprehension had we of the world and of ourselves! Many of
the circumstances of social life were then important to us which
are now no longer so. But that is not the point of comparison on
which I mean to insist. We less habitually distinguished all that
we saw and felt, from ourselves. They seemed as it were to constitute
one mass. There are some persons who, in this respect, are always
children. Those who are subject to the state called reverie, feel
as if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe,