Like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wastful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as willful disobedience — incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature’s discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed.

T. H. Huxley (1825-1895) English biologist [Thomas Henry Huxley]

“A Liberal Education,” Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews (1870)