If a man made himself an expert in any particular branch of human activity, there would result the strong tendency that a peculiar aptitude towards the same branch would be found among some of his descendants.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.
The real difference between a man's scientific judgments about himself and the judgment of others about him is he has added sources of knowledge.
It should seem, then, that the nature of society dictates another, a higher branch, whose superiority arises from its being the interested and natural conservator of the universal interest.
It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most persevering researches.
All men by nature desire knowledge.
He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.
Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery.
We realise that natural aptitudes are not interchangeable, and each person must, of biological or spiritual necessity, practise the art for which he is fitted.