An Essay on the Evils of Popular IgnoranceFoster, John
Philosophy
An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance
Foster, John
Education; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Literacy; Missions -- India; Religious education
But as the case at present is, what does become, during such portion of
the time, of the ethereal essence which inhabits the corporeal laborer,
this spirit created, it is commonly said and without contradiction, for
thought, knowledge, religion, and immortality? If we be really to believe
this doctrine of its nature and destiny, (for we are not sure that
politicians think so,) can we know without regret, that in very many of
the persons in the situations supposed, it suffers a dull absorption,
subsides into the mere physical nature, is sunk and sleeping in the animal
warmth and functions, and lulled and rocked, as it were, in its lethargy,
by the bodily movements, in the works which it is not necessary for it to
keep habitually awake to direct? And its obligation to keep just enough
awake to see to the right performance of the work, seems to give a
licensed exemption from any other stirring of its faculties. The
employment _is something to be minded_, in a general way, though but now
and then requiring a pointed attention; and therefore this said
intellectual being, if uninformed and unexercised, will feel no call to
mind anything else: as a person retained for some service which demands
but occasionally an active exercise, will justify the indolence which
declines taking in hand any other business in the intervals, under the
pretext that he has his appointment; and so, when not under the immediate
calls of that appointment, he will trifle or go to sleep, even in the full
light of day, with an easy conscience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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