But for us the world is
never finished; every spring is a new creation, every day God adds or
takes away. And you limit God's laws to ten: you limit the Everlasting
Wisdom to ten words. Words are your idols, the bricks out of which
your idols and oracles are built. Listen, I will tell you what I have
always found in towns. I have found words worshipped as something holy
in themselves. Words were used to limit God, debase man. So is it in
your town. Once man thought words; now words are beginning to think
man. Once man conceived future progress; now your idol Progress is
beginning to conceive future man. It is the same as with money; once
man made money, but now in your idolatry money makes the man. Once man
entered commerce that he might have more life; now he enters life that
he may have more commerce. Of women, the very vessels and temples of
human life, you have made clerks; of priestesses unto the Living God
you have made vestals of the dead gold calf. You have insulted the
dignity of man.'
"I waited, but the townsman was silent.
"'Is that not so?' I urged.
"'You have your point of view; we have ours. You have your religion
and we ours,' said the townsman obstinately. 'And _you_ use words, do
you not? You have your terminology; you have your idols, just as we
have.
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