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England such scientific knowledge is practically necessary to all 
who have to deal with steam engines, for without it they would 
blow themselves up, and it is intellectually necessary to all who 
ever think about steam engines, for without it, they would think 
erroneously. All knowledge has these two sides or aspects—the 
practical and the theoretical, or critical—the first concerning all 
who have to do with the subject, the second all who are ever 
compelled to think about the subject. Now there are many 
subjects which the mind encounters in a simple state of society 
and that it is utterly unable to escape from in a highly civilised 
one lam coming to art presently, as you perceive, but before 
coming to art I prefer to give literature as an instance of this. 
The idlest young gentleman in Burnley cannot escape from 
literature, because printing has so disseminated it that books are 
in every house in a wealthy English town. He must of neces- 
sity either have true notions about literature, or erroneous 
notions ; he cannot possibly in these days have no notions at all. 
About poetry, for example, he may think that it is rhymed non- 
sense, but he cannot have absolutely no conception whatever 
about poetry. You see now the drift of my argument. I say 
that in a simple state of society when certain classes of sub- 
jects, or objects, do not present themselves, it is not a 
matter of intellectual necessity that people should be taught 
to have accurate notions about them. Perfectly pure ignorance 
is not always from the intellectual point of view an evil to be 
deplored. The mind is not necessarily injured by it when it has 
other motives for a healthy activity. We all know that a master 
who has to teach anything to a new pupil prefers the clean white 
paper of simple ignorance to a confusion of erroneous notions 
and prejudices difficult to efface. We are all of us quite absolutely 
ignorant of an inconceivable quantity of things and not a bit the 
worse for it. But I do think that we are seriously the worse for 
every false conception that lingers within the recesses of our 
minds. And I venture to affirm very decidedly that when the 
state of society is no longer that of primitive simplicity people 
are very much exposed to the danger of having false conceptions 
which may crystallize into prejudices and distort their views upon 
a variety of subjects with regard to which their simpler ancestors 
had never any views at all. Our grandfathers lived in a state of 
civilization really much more primitive than ours. Regions of 
mental activity which we labour in familiarly were either little 
known to, or absolutely unsuspected by, them, I mean in the 
ordinary provincial life in and about a town like Burnley. It 
requires a great mental effort to throw ourselves back into their 
simpler state, and however we try to do it we are not likely to 
succeed quite perfectly. Of the three great divisions of human 
culture—literature, science and art, the first alone was in any 
