The road
Once upon a time, there was a man who knew all the roads of the world: national roads, suburban ones, township ones, military ones, motorways, railways, city and country roads, neighbourly roads, mule tracks, paths, tracks, yessir, even tracks! (dwg. 2) He knew all the short tracks, forks, crossroads, turns, passages, bridges, ramps, downhill slopes and straight stretches, roadmen and even the number of posts! (dwg. 4) But that wasn’t all: he also knew if a rood was in good or bad condition, if it was busy or deserted, sunny or shady, safe or dangerous, joyful or boring, easy or difficult, gravelled or asphalted, cobblestoned or paved. Not because that man actually went through all those roads; that would have taken beyond a lifetime! But he had studied them on books, geographic and topographic maps. (dwg.3) One evening he held a conference on the street, in the engineering school’s auditorium, that was in the middle of a great park. Streets of every country, paraded in front of the room’s audience. After the conference, the speaker was the last one to leave, and to go home; but he got lost and ended up going in circles around the park all night long. The man knew all the streets in the world, but he wasn’t able to find the road to go back home! (dwg.5) This proofs that the path of experience is much more valuable than the master road of science.
