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Human reason is not the way to escape from devilish sin. Lafferty mocked its limitations. Arrive at Easterwine catalogues the use of human reason to discover the meaning of the universe—in “synthetic love essence”: “Institute members were out now trying to read patterns and shapes in the fluorescence of sea-lice, in snail-slime patterns, in the cross sections of marrow of rock-badger bones, in paddle-fish trails, in nine-year-flight-way designs, in constellations, in ballads (especially in roundels which never do find their own round), in the polterghostly unbalance of a hiatus-human species known as the adolescents, in the cross-timbers, in spark-worm responses.” We will not find what we are looking for in the fluorescence of sea-lice.
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