The father of Grecian philosophy held that “Man was created to know and to contemplate.” The father of Hebrew philosophy—whose “Song,” if not his “Wisdom,” is canonical, and whose judgment, if not his life, is supposed to have been divinely guided—taught the somewhat different lesson: “He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” We have been more or less steadily trying the validity of Solomon’s dictum for about three thousand years. Would it be premature to take stock of the results, and weigh whether it be really for human well-being or the reverse that Knowledge is “increasing,” not only at the inevitable rate of the accumulating experience of generations, but also at the highly accelerated pace attained by our educational machinery? It is at least slightly paradoxical that the same State should call on its clergy to teach as an infallible truth that “he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow,” and at the same time decree for all its subjects, as if it were a highly benevolent measure, universal compulsory education. I fear that the prejudice in favor of Knowledge is so potent that no reader will give me credit for entering on this inquiry in any other spirit than one of banter. Nevertheless, I propose in the present paper to examine, to the best of my ability, the general bearings of book-knowledge upon human happiness and virtue, and so attain to some conclusion on the matter, and decide whether Solomon did or did not give proof of profound sagacity in originating the axiom that “Ignorance is bliss” in the usual negative form of Hebrew verities; and also in foretelling (nearly thirty centuries before the present London publishing season) that “of the making of books there is no end.” Knowledge, like other evils, it seems, is infinitely reproductive.