An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance | Page 7

plain statement, in a
series of particulars, of what they nevertheless judge it rational to
expect from a general extension of good education.--Answer to the
question, whether it be presumed that any merely human discipline can
reduce its subjects under the predominance of religion.--Answer to the
inquiry, what is the extent of the knowledge of which it is desired to
put the common people in possession.--Observations on supposed
degrees of possible advancement of the knowledge and welfare of the
community; with reflections of astonishment and regret at the actual
state of ignorance, degradation, and wretchedness, after so many
thousand years have passed away.--Congratulatory notice of those
worthy individuals who have been rescued from the consequences of a
neglected education by their own resolute mental exertions.

Essay on Popular Ignorance.

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."
Hosea.

Section I.

It may excite in us some sense of wonder, and perhaps of self-reproach,
to reflect with what a stillness and indifference of the mind we can hear
and repeat sentences asserting facts which are awful calamities. And
this indifference is more than the accidental and transient state, which
might prevail at seasons of peculiar heaviness or languor. The
self-inspector will often be compelled to acknowledge it as a symptom
and exemplification of the habit of his mind, that ideas of extensive
misery and destruction, though expressed in the plainest, strongest
language, seem to come with but a faint glimmer on his apprehension,
and die away without awakening one emotion of that sensibility which
so many comparatively trifling causes can bring into exercise.
Will the hearers of the sentence just now repeated from the sacred book,

give a moment's attention to the effect it has on them? We might
suppose them accosted with the question, Would you find it difficult to
say what idea, or whether anything distinct enough to deserve the name
of an idea, has been impressed by the sound of words bearing so
melancholy a significance? And would you have to confess, that they
excite no interest which would not instantly give place to that of the
smallest of your own concerns, occurring to your thoughts; or would
not leave free the tendency to wander loose among casual fancies; or
would not yield to feelings of the ludicrous, at the sight of any
whimsical incident? It would not probably be unfair to suspect such
faintness of apprehension, and such unfixedness and indifference of
thought, in the majority of any large number of persons, though drawn
together ostensibly to attend to matters of gravest concern. And perhaps
many of the most serious of them would acknowledge it requires great
and repeated efforts, to bring themselves to such a contemplative
realization of an important subject, that it shall lay hold on the
affections, though it should press on them, as in the present instance,
with facts and reflections of a nature the most strongly appealing to a
mournful sensibility.
That the "people are destroyed," is perceived to have the sound of a
lamentable declaration. But its import loses all force of significance in
falling on a state of feeling which, if resolvable into distinct sentiments,
would be expressed to some such effect as this:--that the people's
destruction, in whatever sense of the word, is, doubtless, a deplorable
thing, but quite a customary and ordinary matter, the prevailing fact,
indeed, in the general state of this world; that, in truth, it would seem as
if they were made but to be destroyed, for that they have constantly
been, in all imaginable ways, the subjects of destruction; that, subjected
in common with all living corporeal beings to the doom of death, and to
a fearful diversity of causes tending to inflict it, they have also
appeared, through their long sad history, consigned to a spiritual and
moral destruction, if that term be applicable to a condition the reverse
of wisdom, goodness, and happiness; that, in short, such a sentence as
that cited from the prophet, is too merely an expression of what has
been always and over the whole world self-evident, to excite any
particular attention or emotion.
Thus the destruction, in every sense of the word, of human creatures, is

so constantly obvious, as mingled and spread throughout the whole
system, that the mind has been insensibly wrought to that protective
obtuseness which (like the thickness of the natural clothing of animals
in rigorous climates) we acquire in defence of our own ease, against the
aggrievance of things which inevitably continue in our presence. An
instinctive policy to avoid feeling with respect to this prevailing
destruction, has so effectually taught us how to maintain the exemption,
by all the requisite sleights of overlooking, diverting, forgetting, and
admitting deceptive maxims of palliation, that the art or habit is
become almost