A LIST OF BOOKS - JScholarship

32 INTEODUCTOEY ESSAY.
was not without a determinate effect on his
progress in theorising.
An ordinary youth,
who turns his attention to similar subjects,
discovers falsities, incongruities, and various
points for amendment, and, in the natural
advance of the purely critical spirit unchecked
by considerations of remedy, keeps up before
his young eyes so many instances of the same
error and wrong, that he finds himself
unawares arrived at the startling conclusion,
that aU must be changed—or nothing : in
the face of which plainly impossible achievement,
he is apt (looking perhaps a Httle
more serious by the time he touches at the
decisive issue), to feel, either carelessly or
considerately, that his own attempting a single
piece of service would be worse than useless
even, and to refer the whole task to another
age and person—safe in proportion to his
incapacity.
Wanting words to speak, he has
never made a fool of himself by speaking.