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 made rapid changes enough; but those changes
had no farther development. The new art of war, the new art of
literature, remained stationary, or rather receded and degenerated, till
the end of the eighteenth century.

And so it may be with our means of locomotion and intercommunion, and
what depends on them. The vast and unprecedented amount of capital, of
social interest, of actual human intellect invested--I may say locked
up--in these railroads, and telegraphs, and other triumphs of industry
and science, will not enter into competition against themselves. They
will not set themselves free to seek new discoveries in directions which
are often actually opposed to their own, always foreign to it. If the
money of thousands are locked up in these great works, the brains of
hundreds of thousands, and of the very shrewdest too, are equally locked
up therein likewise; and are to be subtracted from the gross material of
social development, and added (without personal fault of their owners,
who may be very good men) to the dead weight of vested selfishness,
ignorance, and dislike of change.

Yes. A Byzantine and stationary age is possible yet. Perhaps we are now
entering upon it; an age in which mankind shall be satisfied with the
"triumphs of science," and shall look merely to the greatest comfort
(call it not happiness) of the greatest number; and like the debased Jews
of old, "having found the life of their hand, be therewith content," no
matter in what mud-hole of slavery and superstition.