Knowledge again may be acquired by amusements which are out of doors. These again may be innocent or exceptionable. As before, I have nothing to do but with the former. If then I accustom my child to range the fields, as an employment promotive of his health, and connect this healthy exercise with the entertainment of botanical pursuits, do I not, in examining with him the shape, the colour, and the mechanism of plants and flowers, confirm in him his former love of the works of nature? Do I not confirm his former notion of the wisdom and power of omnipotence? Do I not teach him by these, and the other pursuits which have been mentioned, that all recreations should be innocent, and that time should be wisely employed? But hark! another amusement, and one of those which are followed out of doors, is at hand. The hounds are in view, and fast approaching. My son is accidentally solicited to join them. He would ask my permission, but I am absent. At length he goes. He follows them in wild tumult and uproar for an hour. He sees some galloping over hedges and ditches like madmen, and hazarding their persons in a presumptuous manner. He sees others ride over the cultivated fields of their neighbours, and injure the rising corn. He finds that all this noise and tumult, all this danger and injury, are occasioned by the pursuit of a little hare, whose pain is in proportion to the joy of those who follow it. Now can this diversion, educated as my child has been, fascinate him? Will he not question its innocence? And will he not question its consistency as a natural pursuit, or as an employment for his time? It is thus then that knowledge will be found to operate as an artificial and innocent preservative against the destructive pleasures of the world. But prohibitions without knowledge will be but of little avail, where there is a prospect of riches, and the power of gratifying any improper appetites as they may arise. But by knowledge we shall be able to discover the beauty of things, so that their opposites, or the things prohibited, will cease to charm us. By knowledge we shall be able to discern the ugliness of the things prohibited, so that we shall be enabled to loathe them, if they should come into our way. And thus an education, conducted upon the principles of knowledge, may operate to the end proposed. CHAP. V. _Education continued, as consisting of knowledge and prohibitions--Good, which the Quakers have done by prohibitions, without any considerable knowledge--Greater good, which they would do with it--Knowledge then a great desideratum in the Quaker education--Favourable state of the society for the communication of it with purity, or without detriment to morals--In what this knowledge should consist--General advantages of it--Peculiar advantages, which it would bring to the society._