On Learning and the Aris. 457 
attributes of his being, and to traduce them, is 
to traduce both man a God. 
But to the innocence of learning as not 
answerable for the duplicity and fraud and dis- 
honesty, which Rousseau charges upon polite. 
ness, it may be farther added to its praise, 
that if any thing can guard a man against the 
impositions of dissembling address and language, 
it is to. the cultivation of the intellect that he 
must be specially indebted for this guard. Learn- 
ing places a man upon a higher ground; it 
confers upon him the advantages of superior 
intelligence ; and when directed to the judgment 
of character, and assisted by an acquaintance 
with men, their objects, their modes, and varied 
import of language, it acquires a kind of inten- 
tion into the very heart. A scientific man is so 
accustomed to yield conviction only to evidence, 
that, he is rescued from that precipitate decision 
which is the pit of fools; he is possessed of more 
nice discernment, more accuracy in weighing 
every thing in the scale of sober judgment, more 
facility in resolving, combining, comparing, 
deciding; so that if imposture must haunt the 
best walks of life, no man can pass these walks 
with more security than the well-educated and 
well-informed man. I do not ascribe this praise 
to the verbal critic, the mere mathematician, Or | 
the simple sciolist of any form; but to him, who 
