h the fermenting
processes of a transition from a lower to a higher grade of living. Look
at the picture of them which art has handed down: their faces are ruddy,
genial, sympathetic, although coarse and vulgar and boorish. And they
learned to accept the inequalities of life without repining insolence.
They were humble, and felt that there were actually some people in the
world superior to themselves. I do not paint their condition as
desirable or interesting by our standard, but as endurable. They were
doubtless very ignorant; but would knowledge have made them any happier?
Knowledge is for those who can climb by it to positions of honor and
usefulness, not for those who cannot rise above the condition in which
they were born,--not for those who will be snubbed and humiliated and
put down by arrogant wealth and birth. Better be unconscious of
suffering, than conscious of wrongs which cannot be redressed.

Let no one here misunderstand and pervert me. I am not exalting the
ignorance and brutality of the feudal ages. I am not decrying the
superior advantages of our modern times. I only state that ignorance and
brutality were the necessary sequences of the wars and disorders of a
preceding epoch, but that this very ignorance and brutality were
accompanied by virtues which partially ameliorated the evils of the day;
that in the despair of slavery were the hopes of future happiness; that
religion took a deep hold of the human mind, even though blended with
puerile and degrading superstitions; that Christianity, taking hold of
the hearts of a suffering people, taught lessons which enabled them to
bear their hardships with resignation; that cheerfulness was not
extinguished; and that so many virtues were generated by the combined
influence of suffering and Christianity, that even with ignorance human
nature shone with greater lustre than among those by whom knowledge is
perverted. It was not until the evil and injustice of Feudalism were
exposed by political writers, and were meditated upon by the people who
had arisen by education and knowledge, that they became unendurable; and
then the people shook off the yoke. But how impossible would have been a
French Revolution in the thirteenth century! What readers would a
Rousseau have found among the people in the time of Louis VII.? If
knowledge breaks fetters when the people are strong enough to shake them
off, ignorance enables them to bear those fetters when emancipation is
im