material; and progress, I say, is inward. The self-help and
self-determination of the independent soul--that is the root of progress;
and the more human beings who have that, the more progress there is in
the world. Give me a man who, though he can neither read nor write, yet
dares think for himself, and do the thing he believes: that man will help
forward the human race more than any thousand men who have read, or
written either, a thousand books apiece, but have not dared to think for
themselves. And better for his race, and better, I believe, in the sight
of God, the confusions and mistakes of that one sincere brave man, than
the second-hand and cowardly correctness of all the thousand.

As for the "triumphs of science," let us honour, with astonishment and
awe, the genius of those who invented them; but let us remember that the
things themselves are as a gun or a sword, with which we can kill our
enemy, but with which also our enemy can kill us. Like all outward and
material things, they are equally fit for good and for evil. In England
here--they have been as yet, as far as I can see, nothing but blessings:
but I have my very serious doubts whether they are likely to be blessings
to the whole human race, for many an age to come. I can conceive
them--may God avert the omen!--the instruments of a more crushing
executive centralisation, of a more utter oppression of the bodies and
souls of men, than the world has yet seen. I can conceive--may God avert
the omen!--centuries hence, some future world-ruler sitting at the
junction of all railroads, at the centre of all telegraph-wires--a world-
spider in the omphalos of his world-wide web; and smiting from thence
everything that dared to lift its head, or utter a cry of pain, with a
swiftness and surety to which the craft of a Justinian or a Philip II.
were but clumsy and impotent.

All, all outward things, be sure of it, are good or evil, exactly as far
as they are in the hands of good men or of bad.

Moreover, paradoxical as it may seem, railroads and telegraphs, instead
of inaugurating an era of progress, may possibly only retard it. "Rester
sur un grand succes," which was Rossini's advice to a young singer who
had achieved a triumph, is a maxim which the world often follows, not
only from prudence, but from necessity. They have done so much that it
seems neither prudent nor possible to do more. They will rest and be
thankful.

Thus, gunpowder and printing