An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance

We were wishing to show how the laboring people's thoughts might be partly employed, during their daily task, and consistently with industry and good workmanship. But what a sta...

But really it is now too late for this resentful and desponding abandonment. They cannot now retire in the tragic dignity of despair. It must be some more forlorn predicament th...

Look at this scene of faith, so distinct, and stretching to such remoteness, from the field of ordinary things; of a subsistence which it is for intellect alone to apprehend; pr...

Can any doubt arise, whether there were in the Christian states resources competent, if so applied, to secure to all the people an elementary instruction, and the possession of...

It is true that very ignorant persons can wonder at such things without deriving much instruction from them; and that much sooner than the more cultivated ones they become so fa...

That power of established custom, which is so great, as we had occasion to show, on the moral sense of even better instructed persons, has its dominion complete over that of the...

But we would believe there are signs of a revolution beginning; a more important one, by its higher principle and its expansive impulse toward a wide and remote beneficence, tha...

As to religion, there is no hazard in saying, that several millions had little further notion of it than that it was an occasional, or, in the opinion of perhaps one in twenty,...

But such benevolent visitors have to tell of still more melancholy exemplifications of the effects of ignorance in the close of life. They have seen the neglect of early cultiva...

It is, however, no consideration of a portion of the people sincere, inquiring, and emerging, though dimly enlightened, from the gloom of so dreary a scene, that is most apt to...

Yet this addiction to sensuality, beyond all competition of worthier modes and means of interest, does not altogether refuse to admit of some division and diversion of the vulga...

That such effects _would_ be inseparable from a great general advancement of the people in knowledge and corrected character, must be freely acknowledged to its disapproves. And...

But it is infinitely easier for any set of human beings to maintain a community of feeling in hostility to something else, than in benevolence toward another; for here no sacrif...

"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...

But in whatever degree the case might be thus, as to the cause, the fact is evident, that the Jewish people were not more remarkable for their pre-eminence in privilege, than fo...

As these institutions go on, augmenting in number and improving in organization, their pupils will bring their quality and efficacy to the proof, as they grow to maturity, and g...

It is fortunate, we may reply, to be "wiser than the ancients," without the trouble of _learning_ anything by means of them. It is fortunate, also, to have ascertained how much...

The people of those nations (and the same description is applicable to modern heathens) did not know the essential nature of perfect goodness, or virtue. How should they know it...

If a contemplative and religious man, looking back through little more than a century, were enabled to take, with an adequate comprehension of intellect, the sum and value of so...

It would be less than what is due to suffering humanity, to leave this topic without observing, that if a numerous division of the community should be sinking under severe, prot...

If alarmed at such a view, will not they who have so long held the sovereign control over the national economy feel the bitterest regret that it had not been given them to obvia...

And then consider, in so close a kind of community, what near and intimate witnesses they are of all one another's faults, weaknesses, tempers, perversities; of whatever is offe...

Objection, that a material increase of knowledge and intelligence among the people would render them unfit for their station, and discontented with it; would excite them to insu...

But _is_ it really admitted, as a great principle for practical application, that the mind, the intelligent, imperishable existence, is the supremely valuable thing in man? It i...