The bulk
of mankind is not likely to be very wise or very good; and I know not,
whether there are not many states of life, in which all knowledge, less
than the highest wisdom, will produce discontent and danger. I believe
it may be sometimes found, that a _little learning_ is, to a poor man, a
_dangerous thing_. But such is the condition of humanity, that we easily
see, or quickly feel the wrong, but cannot always distinguish the right.
Whatever knowledge is superfluous, in irremediable poverty, is hurtful,
but the difficulty is to determine when poverty is irremediable, and at
what point superfluity begins. Gross ignorance every man has found
equally dangerous with perverted knowledge. Men, left wholly to their
appetites and their instincts, with little sense of moral or religious
obligation, and with very faint distinctions of right and wrong, can
never be safely employed, or confidently trusted; they can be honest
only by obstinacy, and diligent only by compulsion or caprice. Some
instruction, therefore, is necessary, and much, perhaps, may be
dangerous.
Though it should be granted, that those who are _born to poverty and
drudgery_, should not be _deprived_, by an _improper education_, of the
_opiate of ignorance_; even this concession will not be of much use to
direct our practice, unless it be determined, who are those that are
_born to poverty_.
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