254 THE PRIDE OF IGNORANCE. 



that lie is not a wretched fool of a spendthrift; 

 the spendthrift is jn-oiid that he is not a horrid 

 old curmudgeon of a miser. The drunkard prides 

 himself on not being a nasty straight-laced teeto- 

 taler ; the libertine prides himself on not being one 

 of those ugl3% sour-faced oily hypocrites who look 

 as if they had swallowed a poker in their youth 

 and never digested it. So, it is pndjable, the 

 ignorant man i)rides himself on not being a dry 

 stick of a pedant — on knowing the world and 

 men and things, not mere dull and empt}' useless 

 book-knowledge — on rising superior to those 

 poor fools of scientific men wlio think they are 

 so prodigiously well up in ever\'lhing because 

 they know a bit of mathematics or a trifle of 

 chemistry. Human vanity is so inexplicably 

 deep that it will find out a virtue in every form 

 of vice and every kind of deficiency, provided 

 oidy they are its own personal ones. Then, 

 again, in the second i)lace, there is the undoubted 

 fact that practical men and the world at large 

 immensely underrate the real importance of accu- 

 rate knowledge. They get so many things al- 

 ready done for them, in our extremely comjdex 

 civilization, by tlie men who really do know, that 

 they t\)iget how very ill they would actually fare 

 if it were not for the existence of the exact peo- 

 ple whom they so often des})ise and laugh at. 

 "At what o'clock will the moon rise to-night?" 



