At last, after talking for thirty hours on end and instructing me in all man needs to know, the Sage concluded:
“Now I shall sum up my teaching. It is contained in two axioms:
“‘All different things are identical.’
“‘All identicals are different.’
“Ring the changes in your mind on these two propositions and you will see, firstly, that they are not incompatible; next, that thought can formulate only one or the other and can only move from one to the other. There is a time for one of them and a time for the other, and the man who thinks the one will think the other. That’s all.”— Paul Valéry, The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, Vol. 14
I believe the Sage later became editor-in-chief of Engagement Today, where these two axioms remain the entire editorial manual. He’s teaching the manufacture of takes:
“All different things are identical.”
→ “Actually, Weightlifting and Reading Are the Same Activity.”
“All identicals are different.”
→ “Why Reading Is Nothing Like Weightlifting—and Why Confusing Them Is Dangerous.”
“There’s a time for one and a time for the other.”
→ Publish the second one nine months after the first.