done, and
gossiped in a country town for the last fifty years, than the best
bluestocking of the age will be able to glean from that sort of learning
which consists in an acquaintance with all the novels and satirical
poems published in the same period. People in towns, indeed, are
woefully deficient in a knowledge of character, which they see only _in
the bust_, not as a whole-length. People in the country not only know
all that has happened to a man, but trace his virtues or vices, as they
do his features, in their descent through several generations, and
solve some contradiction in his behaviour by a cross in the breed half
a century ago. The learned know nothing of the matter, either in town
or country. Above all, the mass of society have common sense, which the
learned in all ages want. The vulgar are in the right when they judge
for themselves; they are wrong when they trust to their blind guides.
The celebrated nonconformist divine, Baxter, was almost stoned to death
by the good women of Kidderminster, for asserting from the pulpit that
'hell was paved with infants' skulls'; but, by the force of argument,
and of learned quotations from the Fathers, the reverend preacher at
length prevailed over the scruples of his congregation, and over reason
and humanity.

Such is the use which has been made of human learning. The labourers
in this vineyard seem as if it was their object to confound all common
sense, and the distinctions of good and evil, by means of traditional
maxims and preconceived notions taken upon trust, and increasing in
absurdity with increase of age. They pile hypothesis on hypothesis,
mountain high, till it is impossible to come at the plain truth on any
question. They see things, not as they are, but as they find them in
books, and 'wink and shut their apprehensions up,' in order that they
may discover nothing to interfere with their prejudices or convince them
of their absurdity. It might be supposed that the height of human wisdom
consisted in maintaining contradictions and rendering nonsense sacred.
There is no dogma, however fierce or foolish, to which these persons
have not set their seals, and tried to impose on the understandings of
their followers as the will of Heaven, clothed with all the terrors
and sanctions of religion. How little has the human understanding been
directed to find out the true and useful! How much ingenuity has been
thrown away in the defence of creeds and systems! How m