回信

读完此书忍不住给Andrew Abbot去信，非常简短地表达了一些感想，未料他很快回信：

Thanks for these very kind words. Your message finds me indeed resting after going on elsewhere, nine years after writing that text, sitting in my library study, staring at the blank walls, contemplating the wreck of yet another version of my attempt at a full exposition of my thought. A mistake in Chapter Four makes the whole thing need rewriting. Like George Herbert Mead, and perhaps like Zhuangzi, I am unable effectively to write up my system of thought precisely because it is always changing. But your message brings me hope, as if there is a new and comfortable illusion around the next corner, even for an old man with declining powers.

智识不老，终得柳暗花明。