Open your heart to the influence of the light which, from time to time, breaks in upon you: when scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or to Pekuah, and keep this thought always prevalent, that you are only one atom of the mass of humanity, and have neither such virtue nor vice, as that you should be singled out for supernatural favors or afflictions.
—Imlac, in Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia
The title is one of Bernard Lonergan’s Transcendental Imperatives.
