Truth Gains More Even By The Errors

The Natural Tendency Of Representative Government, As Of Modern Civilisation, Is Towards Collective Mediocrity: And This Tendency Is Increased By All Reductions And Extensions Of The Franchise, Their Effect Being To Place The Principal Power In The Hands Of Classes More And More Below The Highest Level Of Instruction In The Community.

The Process Of Tracing Regularity In Any Complicated, And At First Sight Confused, Set Of Appearances, Is Necessarily Tentative; We Begin By Making Any Supposition, Even A False One, To See What Consequences Will Follow From It ; And By Observing How These Differ From The Real Phenomena, We Learn What Corrections To Make In Our Assumption.

The Great Majority Of Those Who Speak Of Perfectibility As A Dream, Do So Because They Feel That It Is One Which Would Afford Them No Pleasure If It Were Realized.

Among The Works Of Man, Which Human Life Is Rightly Employed In Perfecting, The First In Importance Surely Is Man Himself.

Each Undervalues That Part Of The Materials Of Thought With Which He Is Not Familiar.