Tuesday, November 09, 2004
On the Ignorance of the Learned
William Hazlitt, On the Ignorance of the Learned (Edinburgh Magazine, July, 1818):
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- You might as well ask the paralytic to leap from his chair and throw away his crutch, or, without a miracle, to "take up his bed and walk," as expect the learned reader to thrown down his book and think for himself. He clings to it for his intellectual support; and his dread of being left to himself is like the horror of a vacuum. He can only breathe a learned atmosphere, as other men breath common air. He is a borrower of sense. He has no ideas of his own, and must live on those of other people.
- Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
