Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

Crabbed Age mid Yoiitk ^7
They are used in pure superstition, as old
clodhoppers spoil Latin by way of an
exorcism. And yet they are vastly service-
able for checking unprofitable discussion and
stopping the mouths of babes and sucklings.
And when a young man comes to a certain
stage of intellectual growth, the examination
of these counters forms a gymnastic at once
amusing and fortifying to the mind.
Because I have reached Paris, I am not
ashamed of having passed through Newhaven
and Dieppe. They were very good places
to pass through, and I am none the less at
my destination. All my old opinions were
only stages on the way to the one I now
hold, as itself is only a stage on the way to
something else. I am no more abashed
at having been a red-hot Socialist with a
panacea of my own than at having been a
sucking infant. Doubtless the world is quite
right in a million ways ; but you have to be
kicked about a little to convince you of the
fact. And in the meanwhile you must do
something, be something, believe something.