"Nec eventus modo hoc docet, stultorum iste magister est, sed eadem ratio, quae fuit futuraque, donec res eaedem manebunt, immutabilis est."
Livy, History of Rome, Book 22
And it is not only the result that will instruct them, that teacher of fools, but reason itself, which was and will be unchanging, so long as the same fundamental conditions still hold.
"what should you do to avoid being an idiot or a swine? Merely this: You should do something great, you should lay aside all the foolishness of a more of less long existence, you should become resigned to the fact that you will seem ridiculous to a race of janitors and bureaucrats if you are to enter the service of Splendor. Then you will know what it means to be the friend of God. The friend of God!"
Léon Bloy