By and by he gets tired of lying on his back. DISCONTENT with his condition makes him wriggle and wriggle. At last he succeeds in turning over.
If he were contented then, there would be no men on earth—only huge babies. But DISCONTENT again seizes him, and through discontent he learns to crawl.
Crawling—travelling on hands and knees—satisfied lower forms of animal life. It used to satisfy us, in the old days of early evolutionary stages.
But the human infant—thanks to inborn cravings—is DISCONTENTED with crawling. With much trouble and risk and many feeble totterings, he learns to walk erect. He gets up into a position that takes his eyes off the ground. He is able to look at the sun and stars and takes the position of a man. DISCONTENT is his mainspring at every stage. ——
What discontent does in the limited life of a child, it does on a much larger scale in the life of a man—and on a scale still larger in the life of a race.
You can always tell when a man has reached the limit of his possible development. He ceases to be discontented—or at least to show discontent actively.
Contentment, apathy, are signs of decadence and of a career ended in either a man or a nation.
If a baby lies still, no longer wiggling or trying to swallow his toe, you may be sure that he is seriously ill. The nation that no longer wiggles is in a condition as serious as that of the motionless infant. ——
The man or newspaper which imparts dissatisfaction—wise discontent to a nation or to individuals, gives them the motive power that brings improvement.
Ruskin as a young man declared that his one hope in life was to arouse "some dissatisfaction."