For, as skepticism is in one sense the handmaid of truth, discontent is
the mother of progress. The man is comparatively of little use in the
world who is contented.
Education of the modern sort unsettles the peasant, renders him unfit for
labor, and gives us a half-educated idler in place of a conscientious
workman.
Education must go forward; the man must not be half but wholly educated.
It is only half-knowledge like half-training in a trade that is
dangerous.
Mr. Froude runs lightly over a list of subjects upon which the believer
in progress relies for his belief, and then says of them that the world
calls this progress--he calls it only change.
There are some select souls who sit apart in calm endurance, waiting to
be translated out of a world they are almost tired of patronizing, to
whom the whole thing seems, doubtless, like a cheap performance. They
sit on the fence of criticism, and cannot for the life of them see what
the vulgar crowd make such a toil and sweat about.