The intellectual inferiority of polished nations accounted for.

sent day reduced almost entirely to certain false sciences, to which even ignorance is preferable.

CHAP. III.

OF FALSE SCIENCE, OR ACQUIRED IGNORANCE.

MAN is born ignorant; he is not born a fool; and

it is not even without labour that he is made one. To be such, and to be able to extinguish in himself his natural lights, art and method must be used; instruction must heap on him error upon error; more he reads, the more numerous must be the prejudices he

contracts.

If silliness be the common condition of mankind among polished nations, it is the effect of a contagious instruction; it is because they are educated by men of false science, and read silly books; for it is with books as with men, there is good and bad company. The work of merit is almost every where prohibited (4). Good Sense urges its publication; bigotry forbids it, for bigotry would command the world; she is, therefore, interested in the propagation of folly. Her aim is to blind mankind, and bewilder them in a labyrinth of false science. It is not enough that men be ignorant; ignorance is the middle point between true and false learning. The ignorant man is as much above the falsely learned, as he is below him of real

science.

It is to be attributed to bad instructors.

science. The desire of superstition is to render man stupid; her fear is that he may become enlightened. Now to whom will she commit the care of making him a brute? To the scholastics, for of all the sons of Adam they are the most stupid and conceited (5). "The "mere school divine, according to Rabelais, holds the "same rank among men as that animal does among "beasts, who neither labours like the ox, nor bears a "burden like the mule, nor barks at a thief like a dog, "but like the ape, soils all, breaks all, bites the passenger, and is noxious to every one."

The scholastic is powerful in words, and weak in argument, therefore, what sort of men does he form? Such as are learnedly absurd and stupidly proud (6). With regard to stupidity, I have already said it is of two sorts, one natural, the other acquired; the one the effect of ignorance, the other of instruction. Now of these two sorts of ignorance or stupidity, which is the most incurable? The latter. The man who knows

requisite to excite in But he who is falsely

nothing may learn; it is only him the desire of knowledge. learned, and has by degrees Tost his reason when he thought to improve it, has purchased his stupidity at too dear a rate ever to renounce it His mind overloaded with the weight of a learned ignorance, can never mount up to the truth; it has lost the spring

* A young painter having drawn a picture in the bad manner of his master, shewed it to Raphael, and asked what he thought of it? I think, says Raphael, if you knew nothing, you would soon know something.

Early moral maturity of the Greeks and Romans.

that should raise it up. The knowledge he must acquire is connected with that he must forget. To place a certain number of truths in his memory, it is frequently necessary to displace the same number of errors. Now this displacement requires time, and if it be at last effected, the man is formed too late.

We are astonished at the age the Greeks and Romans acquired maturity. What various talents did they display in their adolescence? At twenty, Alexander, already a man of letters and a great general, undertook the conquest of the East. At the same age Scipio and Hannibal formed the greatest projects, and executed the most difficult enterprises. Before the age of maturity Pompey, the conqueror of Europe, Asia, and Africa, had filled the earth with his glory. Now how did these Greeks and Romans become at once men of letters, orators, generals, and ministers of state? How did they qualify themselves for all sorts of employments in their republics, exercise them, and even frequently abdicate them, at an age when no one in our days is capable of assuming them? Were the men of antiquity different from the moderns? Was their organisation more perfect? No doubtless. For in the sciences, and the arts of navigation, physics, mechanics, the mathematics, &c. we know that the inoderns excel the ancients.

The superiority the latter have for so long a time preserved in morality, politics, and legislation, is therefore to be regarded as the effect of their education. The instruction of youth was not then confided to scholastics, but philosophers. The object of these philosophers

Bad system of modern education.

philosophers was to form heroes and great politicians. The story of the pupil was reflected on the master; that was his reward.

The object of an instructor is no longer the same. What interest has he in exalting the mind and soul of his pupils? None. What is his aim? To weaken their natural abilities, to make them superstitious; to disjoint, if I may be allowed the expression, the wings of their genius; to stifle in their minds all true science, and in their hearts every patriotic virtue (7).

The golden ages of these school divines were the ages of ignorance, whose darkness, before the time Luther and Calvin, covered the earth. Then, says an English philosopher, superstition reigned over all nations, "Men were changed, like Nebuchadnezzar, into "brutes, and being like mules, bridled, saddled, and "and loaded with heavy burdens, they groaned under "the weight of superstition; but at last some of these "mules began to kick, and throw off at once their "loads and their riders.”

No reformation can be hoped in the plan of instruction so long as it is confided to the scholastics. Under such tutors the science taught will never be any thing more than the science of errors; and the ancients will preserve that superiority over the moderns in morality, politics, and legislation, which they owe not to the superiority of their organisation, but, as I have already said, to that of their instruction.

I have now shewn the futility of false learning, and have evinced the importance of this work. It remains to speak of the dryness of the subject.

CHAP.

Difficulty of treating the subject.

CHAP. IV.

OF THE DRYNESS OF THE SUBJECT, AND THE DIFFICULTY OF TREATING IT.

THE examination of the question I have proposed requires a refined and deep discussion. Every discussion of this sort is tiresome.

That a man who is a real friend to humanity, and already habituated to the fatigue of attention, should read this book without disgust, I should not be surprised, and his approbation would doubtless content me, if from the beginning, to render this work useful, I had not proposed to make it entertaining. Now what flowers can be thrown on a question so serious and important. I would instruct the man of common capacity, and in almost every nation men of this sort are incapable of attention hence proceeds disgust and it is in France especially that this sort of men are the most

common.

I passed ten years at Paris; the spirit of bigotry and fanaticism was not then predominant there. If I may believe the public report, it is now the fashion with the higher classes to be more and more indifferent to works of reflection. Nothing affects them but a ridiculous description (8), which satisfies their malignity without disturbing their indolence. I renounce, therefore, the hope of pleasing them. Whatever