It is thus then that knowledge will be found to operate as an artificial and innocent preservative against the destructive pleasures of the world.  But prohibitions without knowledge will be but of little avail, where there is a prospect of riches, and the power of gratifying any improper appetites as they may arise.  But by knowledge we shall be able to discover the beauty of things, so that their opposites, or the things prohibited, will cease to charm us.  By knowledge we shall be able to discern the ugliness of the things prohibited, so that we shall be enabled to loathe them, if they should come into our way.  And thus an education, conducted upon the principles of knowledge, may operate to the end proposed.

CHAP.  V.

Education continued, as consisting of knowledge and prohibitions—­Good, which the Quakers have done by prohibitions, without any considerable knowledge—­Greater good, which they would do with it—­Knowledge then a great desideratum in the Quaker education—­Favourable state of the society for the communication of it with purity, or without detriment to morals—­In what this knowledge should consist—­General advantages of it—­Peculiar advantages, which it would bring to the society.

When we consider that men have all the same moral nature, we wonder, at the first sight, at the great difference of conduct which they exhibit upon earth.  But when we consider the power of education upon the mind, we seem to lose our surprize.  If men in all countries were educated alike, we should find a greater resemblance in their character.  It is, in short, education, which makes the man.  And as education appears to me to be of so much importance in life, I shall make it the subject of this and the succeeding chapter.

All education should have two objects in view, the opening of the understanding and the improvement of the heart.  Of the two, the latter is most important.  There cannot be a question, whether the person of the most desirable character be the virtuous or the learned man.  Without virtue knowledge loses half its value.  Wisdom, without virtue, may be said to be merely political; and such wisdom, whenever it belongs to a man, is little better than the cunning or craftiness of a fox.  A man of a cultivated mind, without an unshaken love of virtue, is but a dwarf of a man.  His food has done him no good, as it has not contributed to his growth.  And it would have been better, for the honour of literature, if he had never been educated at all.  The talents of man, indeed, considering him as a moral being, ought always to be subservient to religion.  “All philosophy, says the learned Cudworth, to a wise man, to a truly sanctified mind, as he in Plutarch speaketh, is but matter for divinity to work upon.  Religion is the queen of all those inward endowments of the soul:  and all pure natural knowledge, all virgin and undeflowered arts and sciences, are her handmaids, that rise up and call her blessed.”