There may be persons ready to make a question here, whether it be so certain that giving the people of the lower order more knowledge, and sharpening their faculties, will really tend to the preservation of good order. Would not such improvement elate them, to a most extravagant estimate of their own worth and importance; and therefore result in insufferable arrogance, both in the individuals and the class? Would they not, on the strength of it, be continually assuming to sit in judgment on the proceedings and claims of their betters, even in the most lofty stations; and demanding their own pretended rights, with a troublesome and turbulent pertinacity? Would they not, since their improvement cannot, from their condition in life, be large and deep, be in just such a half taught state, as would make them exactly fit to be wrought upon by all sorts of crafty schemers, fierce declaimers, empirics, and innovators? Is it not, in short, too probable that, since an increase of mental power is available to bad uses as well as good, the results would greatly preponderate on the side of evil? It would be curious to observe how objections so plausible, so decisive in the esteem of those who admire them, would sound if expressed in other terms. Let them be put in the form of such sentences and propositions as the following:--Though understanding is to be men's guide to right conduct, the less of it they possess the more safe are we against their going wrong. The duty of a human being has many branches; there are connected with all of them various general and special considerations, to induce and regulate the performance; it must be well for these to be defined with all possible clearness; and it is also well for the great majority of men to be utterly incapable of apprehending them with any such definiteness. It is desirable that the rule, or set of rules, by which the demeanor of the lower orders toward those above them is to be directed, should appear to them _reasonable_ as well as distinctly defined; but let us take the greatest care that their reason shall be in no state of fitness to perceive this rectitude of the rules. It would be a noble thing to have a competent understanding of all that belongs to human interest and duty; and therefore the next best thing is to be retained very nearly in ignorance of all. It would be a vast advantage to proceed a hundred degrees on the scale of knowledge; but the advantage is nowhere in the progress; each of the degrees is in itself worth nothing; nay, less than nothing; for unless a man could attain all, he had better stop at two or one, than advance to four, six, or ten. Truths support one another; by the conjunction of several each is kept the clearer in the understanding, the more efficient for its proper use, and the more adequate to resist the pressure of the surrounding ignorance and delusion; therefore let there be the greatest caution that we do not give to three truths in a man's