If it were possible to blot entirely out the whole of German metaphysics, the whole of Christian theology, and the whole of the Roman and English systems of technical jurisprudence, and to direct all the minds that expand their faculties in these three pursuits to useful speculation or practice, there would be talent enough set at liberty to change the face of the world.

John Stuart Mill, ‘Diary’ (February 7, 1854), in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 27, p. 652