“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”William Blake · Căsătoria Cerului cu Infernul · 1793 · Proverbele Infernului
A mistake lived through to the end burns itself out and turns into knowledge.
Blake does not praise foolishness but the road through it. In his vision, the soul grows by contraries: error and truth do not exclude each other, they feed each other. Whoever stays faithful to their own mistake eventually reaches the experience that shatters it. Persisted folly is not static; it burns itself out. A person who falls into the wrong love and lives it fully learns about desire what no theory could have taught them.
Why it matters It speaks to anyone afraid they have wasted time on a wrong choice: an experience lived in full becomes knowledge, not loss.