I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don’t admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that’s how we appraise such attempts nowadays—I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes.

我尝试了后者，却失败了。但我不承认，失败就证明我的看法错误，或者成功就会证明它正确；可如今我们偏偏这样评价这些尝试——不看其本身是否合理，只看偶然的结果。