You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your
experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your
only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they
represent your conscious, rational convictions—or a grab-bag of notions
snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do
not know, notions which, more often than not, you would drop like a hot potato
if you knew. . . .
You might say, as many people do, that it is not easy always to act on abstract
principles. No, it is not easy. But how much harder is it, to have to act on
them without knowing what they are?