Ebook The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Sir William Courtenay

On which it rests to take our opinions, our habits, our prejudices, and our pursuits from those by whom we are surrounded, and it is the greater or the less departure from that servile habit, which establishes the genius or the originality of the in dividual. It must, however, not be overlooked, that the weal or woe of human society depends in a great degree upon the instruments which an individual of that stamp selects for the attainment of his pur pose, and there are some instruments of so danger ous and questionable a character, that unless the most sound and mature judgment be resident in the individual so making use of them, the machinery of society becomes deranged legislation loses its salu tary influence; knowledge is shorn of its power, and that, which in any other hands would have been a blessing, becomes by a wrong and a perverted application, the scourge and curse of the human race.