an (learned in this way) is merely ignorant.
His ignorance is placed where it counts the most,--generally,--at the
fountain heads of society, and he radiates ignorance.

There seem to be three objections to the Dead Level of
Intelligence,--getting people at all hazards, alive or dead, to know
certain things. First, the things that a person who learns in this way
appears to know, are blighted by his appearing to know them. Second, he
keeps other people who might know them from wanting to. Third, he
poisons his own life, by appearing to know--by even desiring to appear
to know--what is not in him to know. He takes away the last hope he can
ever have of really knowing the thing he appears to know, and, unless he
is careful, the last hope he can ever have of really knowing anything.
He destroys the thing a man does his knowing with. It is not the least
pathetic phase of the great industry of being well informed, that
thousands of men and women may be seen on every hand, giving up their
lives that they may appear to live, and giving up knowledge that they
may appear to know, taking pains for vacuums. Success in appearing to
know is success in locking one's self outside of knowledge, and all that
can be said of the most learned man that lives--if he is learned in this
way--is that he knows more things that he does not know, about more
things, than any man in the world. He runs the gamut of ignorance.

In the meantime, as long as the industry of being well informed is the
main ideal of living in the world, as long as every man's life, chasing
the shadow of some other man's life, goes hurrying by, grasping at
ignorance, there is nothing we can do--most of us--as educators, but to
rescue a youth now and then from the rush and wait for results, both
good and evil, to work themselves out. Those of us who respect every
man's life, and delight in it and in the dignity of the things that
belong to it, would like to do many things. We should be particularly
glad to join hands in the "practical" things that are being hurried into
the hurry around us. But they do not seem to us practical. The only
practical thing we know of that can be done with a man who does not
respect himself, is to get him to. It is true, no doubt, that we cannot
respect another man's life for him, but we are profoundly convinced that
we cannot do anything more practical for such a man's life than
respecting it until he respects it himself, and we are convinced als