Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH
seem to stand for vague bodies of theory in the
background. The imputed virtue of folios full of
knockdown arguments is supposed to reside in them,
just as some of the majesty of the British Empire
dwells in the constable's truncheon. They are used
in pure superstition, as old clodhoppers spoil Latin
by way of an exorcism. And yet they are vastly
serviceable for checking unprofitable discussion and
stopping the mouths of babes and sucklings. And
when a young man comes to a certain stage of in-
tellectual 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 sopie-
thing, be something, believe something. It is not
possible to keep the mind in a state of accurate
balance and blank ; and even if you could do so,
instead of coming ultimately to the right conclusion,
you would be very apt to remain in a state of
balance and blank to perpetuity. Even in quite
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