An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance | Page 8

mechanical. When fully matured, it appears like a
wonderful adventitious faculty--a power of evading the sight, of not
seeing, what is obviously and glaringly presented to view on all sides.
There is, indeed, a dim general recognition that such things are; the
hearing of a bold denial of their existence, would give an instant sense
of absurdity, which would provoke a pointed attention to them, the
more perfectly to verify their reality; and the perception how real and
dreadful they are, might continue distinct as long as we were in the
spirit of contradicting and exploding that absurd denial; but, in the
ordinary state of feeling, the mind preserves an easy dulness of
apprehension toward the melancholy vision, and sees it as if it saw it
not.
This fortified insensibility may, indeed, be sometimes broken in upon
with violence, by the sudden occurrence of some particular instance of
human destruction, in either import of the word, some example of
peculiar aggravation, or happening under extraordinary and striking
circumstances, or very near us in place or interest. An emotion is
excited of pity, or terror, or horror; so strong, that if the person so
affected has been habitually thoughtless, and has no wish to be
otherwise, he fears he shall never recover his state of careless ease; or,
if of a more serious disposition, thinks it impossible he can ever cease
to feel an awful and salutary effect. This more serious person perhaps
also thinks it must be inevitable that henceforward his feelings will be
more alive to the miseries of mankind. But how obstinate is an
inveterate habitual state of the mind against any single impressions
made in contravention to it! Both the thoughtless and the more
reflective man may probably find, that a comparatively short lapse of
time suffices, to relieve them from anything more than slight

momentary reminiscences of what had struck them with such painful
force, and to restore, in regard to the general view of the acknowledged
misery of the human race, nearly the accustomed tranquillity. The
course of feeling resembles a listless stream of water, which, after
being dashed into commotion, by a massive substance flung into it, or
by its precipitation at a rapid, relapses, in the progress of a few fathoms
and a few moments, into its former sluggishness of current.
But is it well that this should be the state of feeling, in the immediate
presence of the spectacle exhibiting the people under a process of being
destroyed? There must be a great and criminal perversion from what
our nature ought to be, in a tranquillity to which it makes no material
difference whether they be destroyed or saved; a tranquillity which
would hardly, perhaps, have been awaked to an effort of intercession at
the portentous sign of destruction revealed to the sight of Ornan; or
which might at the deluge have permitted the privileged patriarch to
sink in a soft slumber, at the moment when the ark was felt to be
moving from its ground. If the original rectitude of that nature had been
retained by any individual, he would be confounded to conceive how
creatures having their lot cast in one place, so near together, so much
alike, and under such a complication of connections and dependences,
can yet really be so insulated, as that some of them may behold, with
immovable composure, innumerable companies of the rest in such a
condition, that it had been better for them not to have existed.
To such a condition a vast multitude have been consigned by "the lack
of knowledge." And we have to appeal concerning them to whatever
there is of benevolence and conscience, in those who deem themselves
happy instances of exemption from this deplorable consignment; and
are conscious that their state of inestimable privilege is the result, under
the blessing of heaven, of the reception of information, of truth, into
their minds.
If it were suggested to the well instructed in our companies to take an
account of the benefit they have received through the medium of
knowledge, they would say they do not know where to begin the long
enumeration, or how to bring into one estimate so ample a diversity of
good. It might be something like trying to specify, in brief terms, what
a highly improved portion of the ground, in a tract rude and sterile if
left to itself, has received from cultivation; an attempt which would

carry back the imagination through a progression of states and
appearances, in which the now fertile spots, and picture-like scenes,
and commodious passes, and pleasant habitations, may or must have
existed in the advance from the original rudeness. The estimate of what
has ultimately been effected, rises at each stage in this retrospect of the
progress, in which so many