Err, wander and fail

Meaning

The error vocabulary combines missing the desired matter, straying in pursuit and running into damaging failure. In the prologue, such errors affect eminent and ordinary seekers alike; diligence and expense do not by themselves prevent them. The language explains misdirected pursuit rather than declaring that all seekers lack effort.

In the first part, aberriren and fehlen attach jointly to the practitioner and the art when the heart is not purified in correspondence with the work. The English ‘go wholly astray and fail together’ preserves this ethical coordination. Error here is therefore more than a wrong reading or a technical mishap: the main author connects the direction of desire with the direction of practice.