The great fallacy—the most pernicious error of the present day—is the belief that a knowledge of reading and writing constitutes education. “Reading and writing,” it has been well said, “is no more education than a knife and fork is a good dinner.” To teach a man how to read and write is, as it were, to confer upon him a new sense. All our senses differ one from another in having various _telescopic_ powers—that is to say, of perceiving external objects at greater or less distances. For touching and tasting, it is necessary that the object should be in immediate contact with the body; for smelling, the object may be slightly removed from us; for hearing, it may be still more remote; and for seeing, it may be the most distant of all. Nevertheless, it is necessary in all these cases that the object of perception should be _present_ with us: with reading and writing, however, the telescopic power is immeasurably extended, and we are made cognizant of phenomena occurring hundreds of miles distant, and hundreds of years ago. As our senses, therefore, are merely ducts of knowledge, so are reading and writing merely the means of acquiring information. We might as well believe that the addition of a nose, or a pair of eyes or ears—that the faculty of seeing, hearing, or smelling, in short, should make creatures wise or good, as that the arts of orthoëpy and orthography were the great panacea for all social and moral evil. No! if we would really make people wiser and better, we must make them acquainted with the laws of the material, mental, and moral universe in which they are placed, and upon which their happiness is made to depend. A knowledge of the laws of _matter_ enables a man to promote the physical good—of the laws of mind, the intellectual good—of the laws of the heart, the moral good, both of himself and his fellow-creatures. According as we become acquainted with the various substances and circumstances existing and occurring in the material world, and thereby come to understand their relation to each other as well as to ourselves, so are we enabled to give a particular direction to the succession of events without, and so to alleviate the wants and increase the pleasures of ourselves and others. According, too, as we get to know the links which bind thought to thought, as well as the ties which connect our perceptions with certain classes of relations—with our feelings of beauty, sublimity, or ludicrousness—so are we enabled to induce pleasant trains of ideas, and to promote the delight of those around us. And thus it is in the moral universe. According as we study the connexions between our acts and emotions, and become convinced of the felicity which attends the contemplation of any benefit disinterestedly conferred, and the uneasiness which accompanies the remembrance of any wanton injury, so are we the more anxious to encourage the good and restrain the evil impulses of our nature.