"
The steep antagonism between the money-getting and the academic
class must be freely admitted, and perhaps is the more violent, that
whilst our work is imposed by the soil and the sea, our culture is
the tradition of Europe. But we cannot share the desperation of our
contemporaries, least of all should we think a preternatural
enlargement of the intellect a calamity. A new perception, the
smallest new activity given to the perceptive power, is a victory won
to the living universe from chaos and old night, and cheaply bought
by any amounts of hard-fare and false social position. The balance
of mind and body will redress itself fast enough. Superficialness is
the real distemper. In all the cases we have ever seen where people
were supposed to suffer from too much wit, or as men said, from a
blade too sharp for the scabbard, it turned out that they had not wit
enough. It may easily happen that we are grown very idle and must go
to work, and that the times must be worse before they are better. It
is very certain, that speculation is no succedaneum for life. What
we would know, we must do.
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