The Story of B: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

by Daniel Quinn

“The point I want to make here is that I have no idea what people with changed minds will do. Paul was in the same condition as he traveled the empire changing minds in the middle of the first century. He couldn’t possibly have predicted the institutional development of the papacy or the shape of Christian society in feudal Europe. By contrast, the early science-fiction writer Jules Verne could make a century’s worth of excellent predictions, because nothing changed between his time and ours in terms of vision. If people in the coming century have a new vision, then they’ll do what is completely unpredictable by us. Indeed, if this were not the case—if their actions were predictable by us—then this would prove that they didn’t have a new vision after all, that their vision and ours were essentially the same.”