1 34 Ignorance, a chief cause of evil. 



we to continue uninformed ; because the less intelli- 

 gent we are the less are we able to perceive the evil 

 effects of our blindness or the advantages of know- 

 ledge. As also the present state of civilzation is very 

 imperfect, and unsolved problems exist in all direc- 

 tions, ignorance and all its evil consequences are 

 extremely prevalent. It causes the great mass of 

 mankind to neglect better objects for the sake of 

 money. It indirectly constrains lawyers to neglect 

 moral evidence. It induces medical men to withold 

 truth from ignorant patients. It causes ministers of 

 religion to prefer doctrine to demonstration. It 

 would therefore be comparatively easy to compose 

 lists of our moral deficiences, and of improvements 

 urgently needed in morality, far more extensive than 

 the very incomplete ones of our material short- 

 comings already given (see pp. 68 to 78). To 

 enumerate however the imperfections in the moral 

 conduct of mankind, the frauds in trades, the undue 

 advantage taken of the defenceless, the deceit and 

 empiricism in professions, the professional trading on 

 human weakness, the cruelty of field sports, the 

 hollow motives of social, political, and religious life, 

 the propagating as infallible truth, doctrines which 

 may be fallacious, is not the object of this Chapter ; 

 but rather to make clear the fact, that the extension 

 of the domain of verified truth by means of scientific 

 research is highly conducive to moral progress. 



The extension of new scientific knowledge is influ- 

 encing morality and gradually reducing the selfishness 



