Fear of such Institutions as these! We have heard people
sometimes speak with jealousy of them,--with distrust of them!
Imagine here, on either hand, two great towns like Leeds, full of
busy men, all of them feeling necessarily, and some of them
heavily, the burdens and inequalities inseparable from civilized
society. In this town there is ignorance, dense and dark; in that
town, education--the best of education; that which the grown man
from day to day and year to year furnishes for himself and
maintains for himself, and in right of which his education goes on
all his life, instead of leaving off, complacently, just when he
begins to live in the social system. Now, which of these two towns
has a good man, or a good cause, reason to distrust and dread?
"The educated one," does some timid politician, with a marvellously
weak sight, say (as I have heard such politicians say), "because
knowledge is power, and because it won't do to have too much power
abroad." Why, ladies and gentlemen, reflect whether ignorance be
not power, and a very dreadful power. Look where we will, do we
not find it powerful for every kind of wrong and evil? Powerful to
take its enemies to its heart, and strike its best friends down--
powerful to fill the prisons, the hospitals, and the graves--
powerful for blind violence, prejudice, and error, in all their
gloomy and destructive shapes. Whereas the power of knowledge, if
I understand it, is, to bear and forbear; to learn the path of duty
and to tread it; to engender that self-respect which does not stop
at self, but cherishes the best respect for the best objects--to
turn an always enlarging acquaintance with the joys and sorrows,
capabilities and imperfections of our race to daily account in
mildness of life and gentleness of construction and humble efforts
for the improvement, stone by stone, of the whole social fabric.
Pages:
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235