acknowledgment how much the hopes of sober-minded projectors of improvement are limited by what they see of the disorder in the essential constitution of our nature; and next, by a plain statement, in a series of particulars, of what they nevertheless judge it rational to expect from a general extension of good education.--Answer to the question, whether it be presumed that any merely human discipline can reduce its subjects under the predominance of religion.--Answer to the inquiry, what is the extent of the knowledge of which it is desired to put the common people in possession.--Observations on supposed degrees of possible advancement of the knowledge and welfare of the community; with reflections of astonishment and regret at the actual state of ignorance, degradation, and wretchedness, after so many thousand years have passed away.--Congratulatory notice of those worthy individuals who have been rescued from the consequences of a neglected education by their own resolute mental exertions. 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 asserting 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.