In the most intellectual city of the ancient world, in its most intellectual age, Socrates, its most intellectual inhabitant, discouraged the study of physics because they engendered uncertainty, and did not augment human happiness.
Bagehot highlights Socrates' skepticism towards physics in favor of human happiness.
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Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner.
These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
Political philosophy is still more imperfect; it has been framed from observations taken upon regular specimens of politics and States; as to these its teaching is most valuable.
The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
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