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The Pali texts of the Southern Buddhist school contain great wisdom but they also greatly contain unimaginative pedantic hair-splitting of the true scholasticism. It is strange how such sterility develops when men desert normal living for monastic retreat. This one-sidedness leads to the queer metaphysical illusion that the fine-spun intellectual analysis of life will suffice to yield the secret of life. On the contrary, it can no more do this than the scientific analysis of the materials out of which an organ is made, can yield the secret of its ethereal musical charm.

-- Notebooks Category 7: The Intellect > Chapter 7 : Metaphysics of Truth > # 49