Does this imply that an unlettered mind is desirable?  Not necessarily, but there is a phase of intellectual culture that is detrimental while it lasts.

It is as though one were to choke up a perfectly flowing stream which yielded the moisture to fertile lands, by filling the bed of the stream with rocks and sticks.

The flow of the spiritual currents becomes clogged by the activities of the mind in its acquisition of mere knowledge, and before that knowledge has been turned into wisdom.  The same truth is expressed in the aphorism “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”  It is dangerous because it chains the mind to the external things of life, whereas the totally unlettered (we do not use the term ignorant here) person will, if he have his heart filled with love, perceive the reality of spiritual things that transcend mere knowledge of the physical universe.

Beyond this plane of mortal mind-consciousness, which is fitly described as “dangerous,” there is the wide open area of cosmic perception, which may lead ultimately to the limitless areas of cosmic consciousness.  If, therefore, an education, whether acquired in or out of college, so whets the grain of the mind that it becomes keen and fine enough to realize that knowledge is valuable ONLY as it leads to real wisdom, then indeed it is a benefit; unless it does this, it is temporarily an obstruction.

Out of the lower into the higher vibration; out of sense-consciousness into cosmic consciousness; out of organization and limitations into freedom—­the freedom of perfection, is the law and the purpose.  This Emerson with his clearness of spiritual vision, saw, and this premise he subjected to the microscopic lens of his penetrating intellect.  In his essay on Fate he says: 

“Fate involves amelioration.  No statement of the Universe can have any soundness which does not admit its ascending effort.  The direction of the whole and of the parts is toward benefit.  Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty. * * * The Better; the Best.  The first and worse races are dead.  The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of higher.  In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.”

This phrase, “out of fate into freedom,” may be read to mean, literally, out of the bondage of the sense-conscious life which entails rebirth and continued experience, into the light of Illumination which makes us free.

Further commenting, Emerson says: 

“Liberation of the will from the sheaths and clogs of organization which he has outgrown is the end and aim of the world * * * The whole circle of animal life—­tooth against tooth, devouring war, war for food, a yelp of pain and a grunt of triumph, until at last the whole menagerie, the whole chemical mass, is mellowed and refined for higher use * * ”