The System (n.) built without ethics has everything — everything else — and has left out the one thing needful; he who helps himself to its buccaneer riches is helped again to the beggar's staff.
The System (n.) commits peculation like a Roman proconsul sucking the provinces dry: it makes the System rich and life poor.
The System (n.) is a peddler's cart with a little of everything, so that everything gets done up to a point — even the silliest thing of all, believing up to a point.
The System (n.) runs: §17 Repentance, §18 Atonement, System Complete — with a tip for the binder that half calf makes it metaphysics and full calf the System.
The System (n.) that claims to embrace existence must include the ethical — and to abbreviate the ethical is to make a fool of it; so the System is merely metaphysics.
A System (n.) can achieve absolute mediation only when history is finished — so the System is always in a process of becoming.
A System (n.) is what many in our age have, with no place for the ethical — let them have ten systems, a life view they have not; they were initiated into the greater mysteries before the lesser.
A System (n.) hunts for a place to put sin, and will find it as surely as the man who hunts for the burning tow finds it — by not noticing it is burning his own hand.
A System (n.) was to gaze, like the navel-souls, immovably at the central nothing until everything explained itself — an introverted openness that keeps its innermost movements secret.
A System (n.) that explains the whole of existence, faith included, is easy — and a sound investment, since a fool always finds a bigger fool to admire him.