of the simplest knowledge of hygiene. In former times the destruction was still more frightful. Devastating pestilences, such as are now unknown in European countries, swept off myriads to destruction through this ignorance. A better knowledge of sanitary law, and the advance of knowledge in the art of medicine have practically banished most of these fearful plagues, kept others within narrow limits, and added several years to the average duration of human life. A more widely diffused knowledge on such subjects as ventilation, cookery, and precaution against infection would save from destruction many more.

Equally necessary is knowledge to a people's growth in wealth and prosperity. It used to be the fashion to attribute the prosperity of England's trade and manufacturers to a variety of other causes which no doubt did contribute to it, and to assume that the possession of these natural advantages combined with the pluck, the energy and perseverance of the Englishman, would always keep his country ahead of other nations, without any special attention paid to education. But we have discovered our mistake. We have learned at last (not too late, let us hope) that we shall be outstripped in this age of competition by the more thoroughly educated German and the keen American if we do not mend our ways and increase in knowledge. In thoroughness, both of general and technical education, England is sadly behind, and will have to make up for lost time if the bread is not to be taken out of her people's mouths. And yet even now money is grudged to education that is

lavishly spent on Dreadnoughts, and a worse teacher is often chosen deliberately, when a better might be had if only that better one were not required to be a member of a particular church.

Ecclesiastical jealousies and warring creeds hinder the improvement of our educational system. Many parents there are, too, who partly through shortsightedness, and partly, I fear, through selfishness, stubbornly resist every attempt made to educate their children more thoroughly, grudge every penny of the rates devoted to schools and libraries, and every hour of their children's time taken from work that would immediately augment the family earnings. It is sheer infatuation. If they were not overborne and outvoted by others wiser than themselves, their progeny would perish in the struggle of life, the fierce competition of individuals and nations -perish for lack of knowledge.

So far we have taken the lowest view of the benefit knowledge confers, but we rise higher and say :

II. Knowledge contributes to the moral wellbeing of a people. For lack of it they are led into captivity to their lower nature, into dissipation, vice and crime. Here there may be some demur. I have heard it argued that the spread of mere secular education cannot improve the people's morals-that it will only polish their vices, and make them more skilful in crime; and it is asked with an air of triumph, "Are there no votaries of vice among the highly-educated classes? Have not men of large knowledge often been signal examples of intemperance and profligacy of all kinds?" Now, of course, I do not assert that secular education

alone and by itself is sufficient to regenerate a people, but if those objections be urged in denial of its claim to be a most potent auxiliary, the answers are ample and easy. To parade conspicuous exceptions to the general rule only helps to confirm it. They are conspicuous because they are exceptions. The objectors will scarcely venture to deny that the ranks of the profligate, and the vicious, are mainly recruited from the empty-headed, not from amongst the lovers of knowledge. If the so-called higher classes supply a larger number than the middle classes, that is sufficiently explained by their lack of employment. They have too much leisure. It is as true now as in the days of Dr. Watts, that—

Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do."

Of many besides Lady Clara Vere-de-Vere, it may be said

"They know so ill to deal with time

They needs must play such pranks as these."

As regards crime the statistics for the thirty years following the introduction of the Education Act in 1870 are sufficient to prove our general proposition.1 That other causes have combined with the spread of popular education to produce this gratifying result, I readily admit, but the wider education must be credited with a large proportion of it; and that it must operate not only in the diminution of crime,

1 In 1870, total convictions, 29,052; in 1900, 17,687. When we remember the enormous increase of population in that period these figures are more significant, and still more those which relate to juvenile crime: committals under sixteen years of age in 1870, 8,977; thirty years later, 1,963.

but the diminution of frivolity, dissipation and vice, is evident from the following considerations.

For lack of knowledge people are led into captivity to their senses. If the mental faculties are uncultivated, unstimulated, then the senses remain supreme. The enjoyments of bodily appetite are the only ones of which the individual is capable— and a man must and will seek for pleasure in some direction. What wonder, then, if he falls a victim to sensual indulgence in one form or another. He has nothing else to interest or occupy him. But just in proportion as the mental faculties are developed, and the avenues of knowledge opened up, these bodily appetites meet with formidable competitors. The man is aided both voluntarily and involuntarily. The thirst for knowledge once awakened, higher aptitudes once created, he will in seeking to gratify them, be unconsciously emancipated from thraldom to his lower nature. His thoughts, his time, will be preoccupied, and if he finds himself troubled by solicitations of a lower order from within or around him, he can escape from them by voluntarily betaking himself more vigorously to the pursuits for which his knowledge has qualified him, and to which it has already imparted an interest.

Moreover, the acquisition of knowledge of whatever kind aids the mind in taking a wide and reasonable view of life, in anticipating the future, and providing for it. It makes a man less the child of impulse, and prompts him to look forward and live for something more lasting than the pleasure of the moment. I believe that a very large proportion of the young people who spend their leisure in mere

dissipation, or rude, and often debasing sport, would have escaped these temptations and be leading noble lives if only they had not been deprived of the means of knowledge, or been badly taught so as never to imbibe a love of knowledge. For lack of it they are led into captivity and destroyed.

III. I contend that knowledge in the widest sense of the term promotes the religious welfare of the people, and that the lack of it tends to their spiritual destruction. I know that in saying this I run counter to the prejudices of many people. I know that the delusion is widespread, that whatever knowledge may do for a man's body, it is bad for his soul; that religion thrives best on ignorance; that much learning is fatal to piety; that reason is the foe of faith; and science the modern antichrist. But it is a delusion all the same. It would be strange indeed if it were true-that reason, in which man most resembles God, must not be too much cultivated, lest it lead man astray from God; that He who formed the eye to see, the ear to hear, the mind to know, would have us restrain the use of these faculties lest we should see too much, hear too much, know too much.

But it is not true.

It is true that increase of knowledge is unfavourable to superstition and priest-craft, and alas, in the fact that a moderate amount of superstition and priest-rule, which I would call churchiness, is often identified with religion, even by pious Protestants and Nonconformists, lies the secret of this whole polemic against knowledge. I hold it to be one of the greatest glories of growing knowledge that it