An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance.
by John Foster.
"A Work, which, popular and admired as it confessedly is, has never met with the thousandth part of the attention which it deserves. It appears to me that we are now at a crisis in the state of our country, and of the world, which renders the reasonings and exhortations of that eloquent production applicable and urgent beyond all power of mine to express."
Dr. J. Pye Smith.
Advertis.e.m.e.nt
If the circ.u.mstance of a manner of introduction somewhat different from what would be expected in a composition of the essay cla.s.s were worth a very few words of explanation, it might be mentioned, that the following production has grown out of the topics of a discourse, delivered at a public anniversary meeting in aid of the British and Foreign School Society.
When it was thought, a good while after that occasion, that a more extensive use might be made of some of the observations, the writing was begun in the form of a Discourse addressed to an a.s.sembly, and commencing with a sentence from the Bible, to serve as a general indication to the subject. But after some progress had been made, it became evident that anything like a comprehensive view of that subject would be incompatible with the proper limits of such a composition.
In relinquishing, however, the form of a public address, the writer thought he might be excused for leaving some traces of that character to remain, in both the cast of expression and the theological sentiment; for reverting repeatedly to the sentence from Scripture; and for continuing the use of the plural p.r.o.noun, so commodious for the modest egotism of public discoursers.
In the general design and course of observations, the essay retains the character of the original discourse, which was, in accordance to the presumed expectations of a grave a.s.sembly, an attempt to display the importance of the education of the people in reference, mainly, to moral and religious interests. There are special relations in which their ignorance or cultivation are of great consequence to the welfare of the community. Some of these are of indispensable consideration to the legislator, and to the political economist. But it is in that general and moral view, in which ignorance in the lower orders is beheld the cause of their vice, irreligion, and consequent misery, that the subject is attempted, imperfectly and somewhat desultorily, to be ill.u.s.trated in the following pages.
Nor was it within the writer"s design to suggest any particular plans, regulations, or instrumental expedients, in promotion of the system of operations hopefully begun, for raising these cla.s.ses from their degradation. His part has been to make such a prominent representation of the calamitous effects of their ignorance, as shall prove it an aggravated national guilt to allow another generation to grow up to the same condition as the present and the past. In the course of attempting this, occasions have been seized of exposing the absurdity of those who are hostile to the mental improvement of the people. If any one should say that this is a mere beating of the air, for that all such hostility is now gone by, he may be a.s.sured there are many persons, of no insignificant rank in society, who would from their own consciousness smile at the simplicity with which he can so easily shape men"s opinions and dispositions to his mind whether they will or not. He must have been the most charitable or the most obtuse of observers.
It is feared the readers of the following essay will find some defect of distribution and arrangement. To the candor of those who are practised in literary work it would be an admissible plea, that when, in a preparation to meet a particular occasion for which but little time has been allowed, a series of topics and observations has been hastily sketched out, it is far from easy to throw them afterwards into a different order. The author has to bespeak indulgence also, here and there, to something too like repet.i.tion. If he qualifies the terms in which this fault is acknowledged, it is because he thinks that, though there be a recurrence of similarities, a mere bare iteration is avoided, by means of a diversity and addition of the matter of ill.u.s.tration and enforcement.
Any benevolent writer on the subject would wish he could treat it without such frequent use of the phrases, "lower orders," "subordinate cla.s.ses,"
"inferior portion of society," and other expressions of the same kind; because they have an invidious sound, and have indeed very often been used in contempt. He can only say, that he uses them with no such feeling; that they are employed simply as the most obvious terms of designation; and that he would like better to employ any less ungracious ones that did not require an affected circ.u.mlocution.
In several parts of the essay, there will be found a language of emphatic censure on that conduct of states, that predominant spirit and system in the administration of the affairs of nations, by which the people have been consigned to such a deplorable condition of intellectual and consequently moral degradation, while resources approaching to immensity have been lavished on objects of vanity and ambition. So far from feeling that such observations can require any apology, the writer thinks it is high time for all the advocates of intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, to raise a protesting voice against that policy of the states denominated Christian, and especially our own, which has, through age after age, found every conceivable thing necessary to be done, at all costs and hazards, rather than to enlighten, reform, and refine the people. He thinks that nothing can more strongly betray a judgment enslaved, or a time-serving dishonesty, in those who would a.s.sume to dictate to such an advocate and to censure him, than that sort of doctrine which tells him that it is beside his business, and out of his sphere, as a Christian moralist, to animadvert on the conduct of national authorities, when he sees them, during one long period of time after another, not doing that which is the most important of all things to be done for the people over whom they preside, but doing what is in substance and effect the reverse; and doing it on that great scale, which contrasts so fearfully with the small one, on which the individuals who deplore such perversion of power are confined to attempt a remedy of the consequences.
This interdiction comes with its worst appearance when it is put forth in terms affecting a profound reverence of religion; a reverence which cannot endure that so holy a thing should be defiled, by being brought in any contact with such a subject as the disastrous effect of bad government, on the intellectual and moral state of the people. The advocate of schemes for the improvement of their rational nature _may_, it seems, take his ground, his strongest ground, on religion, for enforcing on _individuals_ the duty of promoting such an object. In the name and authority of religion he may press on their consciences with respect to the application of their property and influence; and he may adopt under its sanction a strongly judicial language in censure of their negligence, their insensibility to their accountableness, and their lavish expenditures foreign to the most Important uses: in all this he does well. But the instant he begins to make the like judicial application of its laws to the public conduct of the governing authorities, that instant he debases Christianity to politics, most likely to party-politics; and a pious horror is affected at the profanation. Christianity is to be honored somewhat after the same manner as the Lama of Thibet. It is to stay in its temple, to have the proprieties of homage duly preserved within its precincts, but to be _exempted_ (in reverence of its sanct.i.ty!) from all cognizance of great public affairs, even in the points where they most interfere with or involve its interests. It could show, perhaps, in what manner the administration of those affairs injures these interests; but it would degrade its sacred character by talking of any such matter. But Christianity must have leave to decline the sinister compliment of such pretended anxiety to preserve it immaculate. As to its sacred character, it can _venture that,_ on the strength of its intrinsic quality and of its own guardianship, while, regardless of the limits thus attempted in mock reverence to be prescribed, it steps in a censorial capacity on what will be called a political ground, so far as to take account of what concern has been shown, or what means have been left disposable, for operations to promote the grand essentials of human welfare, by that public system which has grasped and expended the strength of the community, Christianity is not so demure a thing that it cannot, without violating its consecrated character, go into the exercise of this judicial office. And as to its _right_ to do so,--either it has a right to take cognizance now of the manner in which the spirit and measures of states and their regulators bear upon the most momentous interests, or it will have no right to be brought forward as the supreme law for the final award on those proceedings and those men. [Footnote: A censure on this alleged desecration of religious topics, which had been p.r.o.nounced on the Essay (first edit.) by a Review making no small pretensions both religious and literary, was the immediate cause that prompted these observations. But they were made with a general reference to a hypocritical cant much in vogue at that time, and long before. That it _was_ hypocritical appeared plainly enough from the circ.u.mstance, that those solemn rebukes of the profanation of religion, by implicating it with political affairs, smote almost exclusively on one side. Let the religious moralist, or the preacher, amalgamate religion as largely as he pleased with the _proper sort_ of political sentiments, that is, the servile, and then it was all right.]
It is now more than twenty years since a national plan of education for the inferior cla.s.ses, was brought forward by Mr. (now Lord) Brougham. The announcement of such a scheme from such an Author, was received with hope and delight by those who had so long deplored the condition of those cla.s.ses. But when it was formally set forth, its administrative organization appeared so defective in liberal comprehension, so invidiously restricted and accommodated to the prejudices and demands of one part of the community, that another great division, the one in which zeal and exertions for the education of the people had been more and longer conspicuous, was constrained to make an instant and general protest against it. And at the same time it was understood, that the party in whose favor it had been so inequitably constructed, were displeased at even the very small reserve it made from their monopoly of jurisdiction.
It speedily fell to the ground, to the extreme regret of the earnest friends of popular reformation that a design of so much original promise should have come to nothing.
All legislative consideration of the subject went into abeyance; and has so remained, with trifling exception, through an interval in which far more than a million, in England alone, of the children who were at that time within that stage of their life on which chiefly a general scheme would have acted, have grown up to animal maturity, dest.i.tute of all that can, in any decent sense of the word, be called education. Think of the difference between their state as it is, and what it might have been if there had at that time existed patriotism, liberality, and moral principle, enough to enact and carry into effect a comprehensive measure.
The longer the neglect the more aggravated the pressure with which the subject returns upon us. It is forcing itself on attention with a demand as peremptory as ever was the necessity of an embankment against the peril of inundation. There are no indications to make us sanguine as to the disposition of the most influential cla.s.ses; but it were little less than infatuation not to see the necessity of some extraordinary proceeding, to establish a fortified line between us and--not national dishonor; _that_ is flagrantly upon us, but--the destruction of national safety.
As to national dishonor, by comparison with what may be seen elsewhere, it is hardly possible for a patriot to feel a more bitter mortification than in reading the description, as recently given by M. Cousin, of the state of education in the Prussian dominions, and then looking over the hideous exhibition of ignorance and barbarism in this country; in representing to himself the vernal intelligence, (as we may rightly name it,) the information, the sense of decorum, the fitness for rational converse, which must quite inevitably diffuse a value and grace throughout the general youthful character under such a discipline, and then changing his view to what may be seen all over his own country--an incalculable and ever-increasing tribe of human creatures, growing up in a condition to show what a wretched and offensive thing is human nature left to itself.
When neither opprobrium, nor prospective policy, nor sense of duty, can constrain the attention of the officially and virtually ruling part of society to an important national interest, it is sure to come on them at last in some more alarming and imperative manifestation. The present and very recent times have afforded significant indication of what an ignorant populace are capable of believing, and of being successfully instigated to perpetrate. It is not to be pretended that such ignorance, and such liabilities to mischief, exist only in particular spots of the land, as if the local outbreaks were merely incidental and insulated facts, standing out of community with anything widely pervading the ma.s.s. Within but very few years of the present date, we have had the spectacle of millions, literally millions, of the people of England, yielding an absolute credence to the most monstrous delusions respecting public questions and measures, imposed on them by dishonest artifice, and what may be called moral incendiarism; and these delusions of a nature to excite the pa.s.sions of the mult.i.tude to crime. It is difficult to believe that all this can be seen without serious apprehension, by those who sustain the primary responsibility for devising measures to secure the national _safety_, (that we may take the lowest term of national welfare;) and that they can be content to rest that security on expedients which, in keeping the people in order, make them no wiser or better. It would truly be a glorious change in our history, if we might at length see the national power wielded by enlightened, virtuous, and energetic spirits, not only to the bare effect of withstanding disorder and danger, but in a resolute, invincible determination to redeem us from the national ignominy of exhibiting to the world, far in the nineteenth century, a rude, unprincipled, semi-barbarous populace.
Thus far the hopes which had flattered us with such a change, as a consequence of a political movement so considerable as to be denominated a revolution, have been grievously disappointed. We must wait, but with prognostics little encouraging, to see whether a professed concern for popular education will result in any effective scheme. That profession has. .h.i.therto been followed up with so little appearance of earnest conviction, or of high and comprehensive purpose, among the majority of the influential persons who, perhaps for decorum"s sake, have made it, as to leave cause for apprehension that, if any such scheme were to be proposed, it would be in the first instance very limited in its compa.s.s, indecisive in its enforcement, and n.i.g.g.ardly in its pecuniary appointments. Many of our legislators have never thought of investigating the condition of the people, and are unaware of their deplorable dest.i.tution of all mental cultivation; and many have formed but a low and indistinct estimate of the kind and measure of cultivation desirable to be imparted. Very slowly does the conviction or the desire make its way among the favorites of fortune, that the portion of humanity so far below them should be raised to the highest mental condition compatible with the limitation and duties of their subordinate allotment.
No doubt, the most genuine zeal for the object would find difficulties in the way, of a magnitude to require a great and persevering exertion of power, were they only those opposed by the degraded condition of the people themselves; by the utter carelessness of one part, and the intractableness of another. Nor is it to be denied, that the differences of religious opinion, among the promoters of the design, must create considerable difficulty as to the mode and extent of religious instruction, to form a part of a comprehensive system. But we are told, besides, of we know not what obstruction to be encountered from prejudices of prescription, privileged and peculiar interests, the jealous pride of venerable inst.i.tutions, a.s.sumed rights of station and rank, punctilios of precedence, the tenacity of parties who find their advantage in things as they are, and so forth; all to be deferentially consulted.
If this mean that the old horror of a bold experimental novelty is still to be yielded to; that nothing in this so urgent affair is to be ventured but in a creeping inch-by-inch movement; that the reign of gross ignorance, with all its attendant vices, is to be allowed a very leisurely retreat, retaining its hold on a large portion of the present and following generations of the children, and therefore the adults; that their 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 inst.i.tution, 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 antic.i.p.ated prejudices, selfishness of privilege, venerable inst.i.tutions, pride of station, jealousy of the well-endowed, and the like:--if this be what is meant, we may well ask whether these fact.i.tious 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 p.r.o.nounced "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 princ.i.p.al 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.
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 a.s.serting 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 mechanical.
When fully matured, it appears like a wonderful advent.i.tious 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 ma.s.sive 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 rect.i.tude 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 mult.i.tude 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 pa.s.ses, 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 valuable changes and additions still require to be followed by something more, to complete the scheme of improvement. In thus tracing backward the condition of a now fair and productive place of human dwelling and subsistence, it may easily be recollected, what a vast number of the earth"s inhabitants there are whose places of dwelling are in all those states of worse cultivation and commodiousness, and what mult.i.tudes leading a miserable and precarious life amidst the inhospitableness of the waste, howling wilderness. Each presented circ.u.mstance of fertility or shelter, salubrity or beauty, may be named as what is wanting to a much greater number of the occupants of the world, than those to whom the "lines are fallen in such pleasant places."
When, in like manner, a person richly possessed of the benefits imparted by means of knowledge, finds, in attempting to recount them, that they rise so fast on his view, in their variety, combinations, and gradations from less to greater, as to overpower his computing faculty, he may be reminded that this account of his wealth is, in truth, that of many other men"s poverty. And if, while these benefits are coming so numerously in his sight, like an irregular crowd of loaded fruit-trees, one partially seen behind the offered luxury of another, and others still descried, through intervals, in the distance, he can imagine them all devastated and swept away from him, leaving him in a scene of mental desolation,--and if he shall then consider that nearly such is the state of the great mult.i.tude,--he will surely feel that a deep compa.s.sion is due to so depressed a condition of existence. And how strongly is its infelicity shown by the very circ.u.mstance, that a being who is himself but very imperfectly enlightened, and who is exposed to sorrow and doomed to death, is nevertheless in a state to be able to look down upon the victims of the "lack of knowledge" with profound commiseration. The degree of pity is the measure of a conscious superiority.
We may say to persons so favored,--If knowledge has been made the cause that you are, beyond all comparison, better qualified to make the short sojourn on this earth to the greatest advantage, think what a fatal thing that must be which condemns so many, whose lot is contemporary and in vicinity with yours to pa.s.s through the most precious possibilities of good unprofited, and at last to look back on life as a lost adventure. If through knowledge you have been introduced into a new and superior world of ideas and realities, and your intellectual being has there been brought into exercise among the highest interests, and into communication with the n.o.blest objects, think of that condition of the soul to which this better economy has no existence. If knowledge rendered efficacious has become, in your minds, the light and joy of the Christian faith and hope, look at the state of those, whose minds have never been cultivated to an ability to entertain the principles of religious truth, even as mere intellectual notions. You would not for the wealth of an empire consent to descend, were it possible, from the comparative elevation to which you have been raised by means of knowledge, into melancholy region of spirits abandoned to ignorance.
But in this situation have the ma.s.s of the people been, from the time of the prophet whose words we have cited, down to this hour.
The prophets had their exalted privilege of dwelling amidst the illuminations of heaven effectually countervailed, as to any elation of feeling it might have imparted, by the grief of beholding the daily spectacle of the grossest manifestations and mischiefs of ignorance among the people, for the very purpose of whose exemption from that ignorance it was that they bore the sacred office. One of the most striking of the characteristics by which their writings so forcibly seize the imagination is, a strange continual fluctuation and strife of l.u.s.tre and gloom, produced by the intermingling and contrast of the emanations from the Spirit of infinite wisdom, with those proceeding from the dark, debased souls of the people. We are tempted to p.r.o.nounce that nation not only the most perverse, but the most unintelligent and stupid of all human tribes.
The revealed law of G.o.d in the midst of them; the prophets and other organs of oracular communication; religious ordinances and emblems; facts, made and expressly intended to embody truths, in long and various series; the whole system of their superhuman government, const.i.tuted as a school--all these were ineffectual to create so much just thought in their minds, as to save them from the vainest and the vilest delusions and superst.i.tions.
But, indeed, this very circ.u.mstance, that knowledge shone on them from Him who knows all things, may in part account for an intellectual perverseness that appears so peculiar and marvellous. The nature of man is in such a moral condition, that anything is the less acceptable for coming directly from G.o.d; it being quite consistent, that the state of mind which is declared to be "enmity against him," should have a dislike to his coming so near, as to impart his communications by his immediate act, bearing on them the fresh and sacred impression of his hand. The supplies for man"s temporal being are conveyed to him through an extended medium, through a long process of nature and art, which seems to place the great First Cause at a commodious distance; and those gifts are, on that account, more welcome, on the whole, than if they were sent as the manna to the Israelites. The manna itself might not have been so soon loathed, had it been produced in what we call the regular course of nature. And with respect to the intellectual communications which were given to const.i.tute the light of knowledge in their souls, there can, on the same principle, be no doubt that the people would more willingly have opened their minds to receive them and exercise the thinking faculties on them, if they could have appeared as something originating in human wisdom, or at least as something which, though primarily from a divine origin, had been long surrendered by the Revealer, to maintain itself in the world by the authority of reason only, like the doctrines worked out from mere human speculation. But truth that was declared to them, and inculcated on them, through a continual immediate manifestation of the Sovereign Intelligence, had a glow of Divinity (if we may so express it) that was unspeakably offensive to their minds, which therefore receded with instinctive recoil, They were averse to look toward that which they could not see without seeing G.o.d; and thus they were hardened in ignorance, through a reaction of human depravity against the too luminous approach of the Divine presence to give them wisdom.