I have not the smallest sentimental sympathy with the negro; don't believe in him at all, in short. But it is clear to me that slavery means, for the white man, bad political economy; bad social morality; bad internal political organisation, and a bad influence upon free labour and freedom all over the world. CCCXIV At the present time the important question for England is not the duration of her coal, but the due comprehension of the truths of science, and the labours of her scientific men. CCCXV It is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains. CCCXVI A good book is comparable to a piece of meat, and fools are as flies who swarm to it, each for the purpose of depositing and hatching his own particular maggot of an idea. CCCXVII Children work a greater metamorphosis in men than any other condition of life. They ripen one wonderfully and make life ten times better worth having than it was. CCCXVIII Teach a child what is wise, that is _morality_. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is _religion_! CCCXIX People may talk about intellectual teaching, but what we principally want is the moral teaching. CCCXX We are in the midst of a gigantic movement greater than that which preceded and produced the Reformation, and really only the continuation of that movement. But there is nothing new in the ideas which lie at the bottom of the movement, nor is any reconcilement possible between free thought and traditional authority. One or other will have to succumb after a struggle of unknown duration, which will have as side issues vast political and social troubles. I have no more doubt that free thought will win in the long run than I have that I sit here writing to you, or that this free thought will organize itself into a coherent system, embracing human life and the world as one harmonious whole. But this organization will be the work of generations of men, and those who further it most will be those who teach men to rest in no lie, and to rest in no verbal delusions. CCCXXI Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation. CCCXXII The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental. CCCXXIII Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigour and capacity. CCCXXIV