48 Selections from Huxley 



est infidelity. The manufacturers and the capitalists 

 swell the chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance 

 makes bad workmen ; that England will soon be unable to 

 turn out cotton goods, or steam engines, cheaper than 

 5 other people ; and then, Ichabod ! Ichabod ! the glory 

 will be departed from us. And a few voices are lifted up 

 in favor of the doctrine that the masses should be educated 

 because they are men and women with unlimited capacities 

 of being, doing, and suffering, and that it is as true now, 



10 as ever it was, that the people perish for lack of knowledge. 



These members of the minority, with whom I confess 



I have a good deal of sympathy, are doubtful whether 



any of the other reasons urged in favor of the education 



of the people are of much value whether, indeed, some 



15 of them are based upon either wise or noble grounds of 

 action. They question if it be wise to tell people that 

 you will do for them, out of fear of their power, what 

 you have left undone, so long as your only motive was 

 compassion for their weakness and their sorrows. And, if 



20 ignorance of everything which it is needful a ruler should 

 know is likely to do so much harm in the governing 

 classes of the future, why is it, they ask reasonably 

 enough, that such ignorance in the governing classes of 

 the past has not been viewed with equal horror? 



25 Compare the average artisan and the average country 

 squire, and it may be doubted if you will find a pin to 

 choose between the two in point of ignorance, class feeling, 

 or prejudice. It is true that the ignorance is of a differ- 

 ent sort that the class feeling is in favor of a different 



30 class, and that the prejudice has a distinct flavor of wrong- 

 headedness in each case but it is questionable if the one 

 is either a bit better, or a bit worse, than the other. The 

 old protectionist theory is the doctrine of trades unions 

 as applied by the squires, and the modern trades unionism 



