Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“valuable acquisitions are only to be retained by the continuation of the same energies which gained them.”
- Date
- 1861
Meaning of “valuable acquisitions are only to be retained by…”
Mill argues that gains decay when the habits of care, thought and exertion that produced them are abandoned, making preservation itself an active form of progress.
Where does it come from?
Considerations on Representative Government (1861), Chapter II, “The Criterion of a Good Form of Government,” Project Gutenberg #5669. Mill argues that preserving valuable social acquisitions requires continued energy, care and thoughtfulness rather than assuming gains maintain themselves. This is nineteenth-century political and institutional argument, not an empirical productivity or self-help guarantee.
