“Why not ask them of me if you ask them of yourself?” he responded. “They were just and natural in themselves, and the forms of things are of little use to one who cares for the essence—just as the forms of the divinities I believed in are of no consequence compared to their essences. What we call thoughts are but too often mere formulas, which by dint of repetition we finally get to believe are in themselves truths, while they are in fact mere dead husks, having no life in them, and which by their very rigidity prevent life. No single statement, however plausible, can contain truth, which is infinite in form and in spirit. If we are to talk together, let us free ourselves, if we can, from formulas, since they only check growth in the spirit, and, so to speak, are mere inns at which we rest for a moment on account of our weariness and weakness. If we stay permanently in them we narrow our minds, dwarf our experience, and make no more progress. For what is truth but a continual progression towards the divine?” “Yet would you say that formulas are of no use? that we should not sum up in them the best of our thought?” “Undoubtedly they are useful. They are trunks in which we pack our goods; but as we acquire more goods, we must have larger and ever larger trunks. It is only dead formulas which kill, and the tendency of formulas is to die and thus to repress thought. Look at the nutshell that holds the precious germ of the future tree. It is a necessary prison of a moment; but as that germ quickens and spreads, the shell must give way, or death is the consequence. The infinite truth can be comprehended in no formula and no system. All attempts to do this have resulted in the same end—death. Every religious creed should be living, but every Church formalizes it into barren words and shapes, and erelong, Faith—that is, the living, aspiring principle—dies, wrapped up in its formal observances or rigid statements, and becomes like the dead mummies of the Egyptians—the form of life, not the reality.” “Too true,” I answered, “all history proves it. Every real and thinking man feels it. As habits get the better of our bodies, so conventions and formulas get the better of our minds. But pray continue; I only listen; and pardon me for interrupting you.”