"[…] Were the mind altogether free from prepoſſeſſion and bias, it might avail itself to more of the ſcanty knowledge which it poſſeſſes. […] At all times we are juſtly said to ſeethrough a glaſs, darkly[…]"
The lines and tints in the original are as confusing as the tracks of a carriage wheel in a busy street. Every new step is seeing through a glass darkly.
1989, Philip Mirowski, More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics, →ISBN, page 174:
Ricardo's tragedy was that he was at the mercy of an image of science derived from his predecessors, an image glimpsed through a glass darkly because of his own remote familiarity with "science"
But it was something else too, something bigger. A kind of awe, as if I had gripped the rim of some vast understanding. Or peered (through a glass darkly, you understand) into the actual clockwork of the universe.
2013, Allen C. Shelton, Where the North Sea Touches Alabama, →ISBN, page 199:
[…] but it's a landscape Weber saw through a glass darkly. African Americans don't appear in his essay either as slaves or as free persons. Nor does the labor violence that pock-marked the capitalist economies appear. It's a curious omission.
