An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance | Page 5

condition
and fate shall be mainly left at the discretion of ignorant and often
worthless parents; that there shall be no considerable positive exaction
of local provision for the institution, or of attendance of those who
should be benefited by it; that, in short, there shall not be a
comprehensive application of the national power through its organ, the
government, by authoritative, and, we must say, in some degree
coercive measures, to abate as speedily as possible the national
nuisance and calamity of such a state of the juvenile faculties and
habits as we see glaring around us; and all this because homage is
demanded to anticipated prejudices, selfishness of privilege, venerable
institutions, pride of station, jealousy of the well-endowed, and the
like:--if this be what is meant, we may well ask whether these factitious
prerogatives, that would thus interfere to render feeble, partial, and
slow, any projected exertion to rescue the nation from barbarism,
turpitude, and danger, be not themselves among the most noxious

things in the land, and the most deserving to be extirpated.
How readily will the proudest descend to the plea of impotence when
the exhortation is to something which they care not for or dislike, but to
which, at the same time, it would be disreputable to avow any other
than the most favorable sentiments, to be duly expressed in the form of
great regret that the thing is impracticable. Impracticable--and does the
case come at last to be this, that from one cause and another, from the
arrogance of the high and the untowardness of the low, the obstinacy of
prejudice, and the rashness of innovation, the dissensions among
friends of a beneficent design and the discountenance of those who are
no better than enemies, a mighty state, triumphantly boasting of every
other kind of power, absolutely cannot execute a scheme for rescuing
its people from being what a great Authority on this subject has
pronounced "the worst educated nation in Europe?" Then let it submit,
with all its pomp, pride, and grandeur, to stand in derision and proverb
on the face of the earth.
* * * * *
With a view to a wider circulation than that which is limited by the
price of the volume published in an expensive form and style of
printing, it has been deemed advisable to publish a cheap edition of the
"Essay on Popular Ignorance." It is not in any degree an abridgment of
the preceding edition; the only omission, of the slightest consequence,
being in a few places where changes have been rendered necessary by
the subsequent conduct of our national authorities, as affecting our
speculations and prospects in relation to general education; while, on
the other hand, there are numerous little additions and corrections, in
attempts to bring out the ideas more fully, or with some little
afterthought of discrimination or exception. In some instances the
connection and dependence of the series of thoughts have been
rendered more obvious, and the sentences reduced to a somewhat more
simple and compact construction; but the principal object in this final
revised has been literary correction, without any material enlargement
or change.
It is hoped that this reprint in a popular form may serve the purpose of
contributing something, in co-operation with the present exertions, to
expose, and partially remedy, the lamentable and nationally disgraceful
ignorance to which the people of our country have been so long

abandoned.

Contents.

Section I.
Defect of sensibility in the view of the unhappiness of mankind.
--Ignorance one grand cause of that unhappiness.--Ignorance prevalent
among the ancient Jewish people.--Its injurious operation--and
ultimately destructive consequence.--More extended consideration of
ignorance as the cause of misery among the ancient heathens.
Section II.
Brief review of the ignorance prevailing through the ages subsequent to
those of ancient history.--State of the popular mind in Christendom
during the complete reign of Popery.--Supposed reflections of a
Protestant in one of our ancient splendid structures for ecclesiastical
use.--Slow progress of the Reformation, in its effects on the
understandings of the people.--Their barbarous ignorance even in the
time of Elizabeth, notwithstanding the intellectual and literary glories
of this country in that period.--Sunk in ignorance still in what has often
been called our Augustan age.--Strange insensibility of the cultivated
part of the nation with regard to the mental and moral condition of the
rest.--Almost heathen ignorance of religion at the time when Whitefield
and Wesley began to excite the attention of the multitude to that
subject.--Signs and means of a change for the better in recent times.
Section III.
Great ignorance and debasement still manifest in various features of the
popular character.--Entire want, in early life, of any idea of a general
and comprehensive purpose to be pursued--Gratification of the senses
the chief good.--Cruelty a subsidiary resource.--Disposition to cruelty
displayed and