On the Ignorance of the Learned by William Hazlitt

On the Ignorance of the Learned

By William Hazlitt

From Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners (1822)

"For the more languages a man can speak,

His talent has but sprung the greater leak;
And, of the industry he has spent upon't,
Must full as much some other way discount.
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac
Do, like their letters, set men's reason back,
And turn their wits that strive to understand it
(Like those that write the characters) left-handed.
Yet he that is but able to express
No sense at all in several languages,
Will pass for learneder than he that's known
To speak the strongest reason in his own."
-Butler (Samuel)

The description of persons who have the fewest ideas of all others are mere
authors and readers. It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be
able to do nothing else. A lounger who is ordinarily seen with a book in his
hand is (we may be almost sure) equally without the power or inclination to
attend either to what passes around him or in his own mind. Such a one may
be said to carry his understanding about with him in his pocket, or to leave
it at home on his library shelves. He is afraid of venturing on any train of
reasoning, or of striking out any observation that is not mechanically
suggested to him by passing his eyes over certain legible characters; shrinks
from the fatigue of thought, which, for want of practice, becomes
insupportable to him; and sits down contented with an endless, wearisome
succession of words and half-formed images, which fill the void of the
mind, and continually efface one another. Learning is, in too many cases,
but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less
often made use of as 'spectacles' to look at nature with, than as blinds to
keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent
dispositions. The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal
generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from
the minds of others Nature puts him out. The impressions of real objects,
stripped of the disguises of words and voluminous roundabout descriptions,
are blows that stagger him; their variety distracts, their rapidity exhausts
him; and he turns from the bustle, the noise, and glare, and whirling motion
of the world about him (which he has not an eye to follow in his fantastic
changes, nor an understanding to reduce to fixed principles), to the quite
monotony of the dead languages, and the less startling and more intelligible
combinations of the letters of the alphabet. It is well, it is perfectly
well. 'Leave me to my repose', is the motto of the sleeping and dead. 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

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own, and must live on those of other people. The habit of supplying our
ideas from foreign sources 'enfeebles all internal strength of thought' as a
course of dram drinking destroys the tone of the stomach. The faculties of
the mind, when not exerted, or when cramped by custom and authority,
become listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of thought or action. Can
we wonder at the languor and lassitude which is thus produced by a life of
learned sloth and ignorance; by poring over lines and syllables that excite
little more idea or interest than if they were the characters of an unknown
tongue, till the eye closes on vacancy, and the book drops from the feeble
hand! I would rather be a wood-cutter, or the meanest hind, that all
day 'sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and at night sleeps in Elysium', than wear
out my life so, 'twixt dreaming and awake. The learned author differs from
the learned student in this, that the one transcribes what the other reads. The
learned are mere literary drudges. If you set them upon original
compositions their heads turn, they don't know where they are. The
indefatigable readers of books are like the everlasting copiers of pictures,
who, when they attempt to do anything of their own, find they want an eye
quick enough, and hand steady enough, and colours bright enough, to trace
the living forms of nature.
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. It is an old remark, that boys who shine at school do
not make the greatest figure when they grow up and come out into the
world. The things, in fact, which a boy is set to learn at school, and on
which his success depends, are things which do not require the exercise
either of the highest or the most useful faculties of the mind. Memory (and
that of the lowest kind) is the chief faculty called into play in conning over
and repeating lessons by rote in grammar, in languages, in geography,
arithmetic, etc., so that he who has the most of this technical memory, with
the least turn for other things, which have a stronger and more natural claim
upon his childish attention, will make the most forward school-boy. The
jargon containing the definitions of the parts of speech, the rules for casting
up an account, or the inflections of a Greek verb, can have no attraction to
the tyro of ten years old, except as they are imposed as a task upon him by
others, of from his feeling the want of sufficient relish or amusement in
other things. A lad with a sickly constitution and no very active mind, who
can just retain what is pointed out to him, and has neither sagacity to
distinguish, nor spirit to enjoy for himself, will generally be at the head of
his form. An idler at school, on the other hand, is one who has high health
and spirits, who has the free use of his limbs, with all his wits about him,
who feels the circulation of his blood and the motion of his heart, who is
ready to laugh and cry in a breath, and who had rather chase a ball or a
butterfly, feel the open air in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow a
winding path, or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests
of his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book,
repeat barbarous distichs, after his master, sit so many hours pinioned to a
writing-desk, and receive his reward for the loss of time and pleasure in
paltry prize-medals at Christmas and Midsummer. There is indeed a degree
of stupidity which prevents children from learning the usual lessons, or ever
arriving at these puny academic honours. But what passes for stupidity is
much oftener a want of interest, of a sufficient motive to fix the attention
and force a reluctant application of the dry and unmeaning pursuits of
school learning. The best capacities are as much above this drudgery as the

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dullest are beneath it. Our men of the greatest genius have not been most
distinguished for their acquirements at school or at the university.
Th' enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever.
Gray and Collins were among the instances of this wayward disposition.
Such persons do not think so highly of the advantages, nor can they submit
their imaginations so servilely to the trammels of strict scholastic discipline.
There is a certain kind and degree of intellect in which words take root, but
into which things have not power to penetrate. A mediocrity of talent, with
a certain slenderness of moral constitution, is the soil that produces the most
brilliant specimens of successful prize-essays and Greek epigrammatists. It
should not be forgotten that the least respectable character among modern
politicians was the cleverest boy at Eton.
Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known to others,
and which we can only derive at second-hand from books or other artificial
sources. The knowledge of that which is before us, or about us, which
appeals to our experience, passions, and pursuits, to the bosom and
businesses of men, is not learning. Learning is the knowledge of that which
none but the learned know. He is the most learned man who knows the most
of what is farthest removed from common life and actual observation, that
is of the least practical utility, and least liable to be brought to the test of
experience, and that, having been handed down through the greatest number
of intermediate stages, is the most full of uncertainty, difficulties and
contradictions. It is seeing with the eyes of others, hearing with their ears,
and pinning our faith on their understandings. The learned man prides
himself in the knowledge of names and dates, not of men or things. He
thinks and cares nothing about his next-door neighbours, but is deeply read
in the tribes and castes of the Hindoos and Calmuc Tartars. He can hardly
find his way into the next street, though he is acquainted with the exact
dimensions of Constantinople and Pekin. He does not know whether his
oldest acquaintance is a knave or a fool, but he can pronounce a pompous
lecture on all the principal characters in history. He cannot tell whether an
object is black or white, round or square, and yet he is a professed master of
the laws of optics and rules of perspective. He knows as much of what he
talks about as a blind man does of colours. He cannot give a satisfactory
answer to the plainest question, nor is he ever in the right in any one of his
opinions upon any one matter of fact that really comes before him, and yet
he gives himself out for an infallible judge on all those points, of which it is
impossible that he or any other person living should know anything but by
conjecture. He is expert in all the dead and in most of the living languages;
but he can neither speak his own fluently, nor write it correctly. A person of
this class, the second Greek scholar of his day, undertook to point out
several solecisms in Milton's Latin style; and in all is own performance
there is hardly a sentence of common English. Such was Dr. — Such is Dr.
—. Such was not Porson [Richard Porson (1759-1808)]. He was an
exception that confirmed the general rule, — a man that, by uniting talent
and knowledge with learning, made the distinction between them more
striking and palpable.
A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must be ignorant even of
them. 'Books do not teach the use of books.' How should he know anything
of a work who knows nothing of the subject of it? The learned pedant is
conversant with books only as they are made of other books, and those
again of others, without end. He parrots those who have parroted others. He
can translate the same word into ten different languages, but he knows
nothing of the thing which it means in any one of them. He stuffs his head

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with authorities built on authorities, with quotations quoted from quotations,

while he locks up his senses, his understanding, and his heart. He is
unacquainted with the maxims and manners of the world; he is to seek in
the characters of individuals. He sees no beauty in the face of nature or of
art. To him 'the mighty world of eye and ear' is hid; and 'knowledge', except
at one entrance, 'quite shut out'. His pride takes part with his ignorance, and
his self-importance rises with the number of things of which he does not
know the value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice.
He knows nothing of pictures, — 'of the colouring of Titian , the grace of
Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, the corregioscity of Correggio, the
learning of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caracci, or the grand
contour of Micheal Angelo', —of all those glories of the Italian and
miracles of the Flemish school, which have filled the eyes of mankind with
delight, and to the study and imitation of which thousands have in vain
devoted their lives. These are to him as if they had never been, a mere dead
letter, a by-word; and no wonder, for he neither sees nor understands their
prototypes in nature. A print of Rubins' Watering place, or Claude's
Enchanted Castle, may be hanging on the walls of his rooms for months
without his once perceiving them; and if you point them out to him he will
turn away from them. The language of nature, or of art (which is another
nature), is one that he does not understand. He repeats indeed the names of
Apelles and Phidias, because they are to be found in classic authors, and
boasts of their works as prodigies, because they no longer exist; or when he
sees the finest remains of Grecian art actually before him in the Elgin
Marbles, takes no other interest in them than as they lead to a learned
dispute, and (which is the same thing) a quarrel about the meaning of a
Greek particle. He is equally ignorant of music; he 'knows no touch of
it', from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to the Shepherd's pipe
upon the mountain. His ears are nailed to his books; and deadened with the
sound of the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery of school-
learning. Does he know anything more of poetry? He knows the number of
feet in a verse, and of acts in a play; but of the soul or spirit he knows
nothing. He can turn a Greek ode into English, or a Latin epigram into
Greek verse; but whether either is worth the trouble he leaves to the critics.
Does he understand 'the act and practique part of life' better than 'the
theorique'? No. He knows no liberal or mechanic art, no trade or
occupation, no game of skill or chance. Learning 'has no skill in surgery', in
agriculture, in building, or in working in wood or in iron; it cannot make
any instrument of labour, or use it when made; it cannot handle the plough
or the spade, or the chisel or the hammer; it knows nothing of hunting or
hawking, fishing or shooting, of horses or dogs, of fencing or dancing, or
cudgel-playing, or bowls or cards, or tennis, or anything else. The learned
professor of all arts and sciences cannot reduce any one of them to practice,
though he may contribute an account of them to an Encyclopedia. He has
not the use of his hands or of his feet; he can neither run, nor walk, nor
swim; and he considers all those who actually understand and can exercise
any of these arts of body or mind as vulgar and mechanical men, — though
to know almost any one of them in perfection requires long time and
practice, with powers originally fitted, and a turn of mind particularly
devoted to them. It does not require more than this to enable the learned
candidate to arrive, by painful study, at a doctor's degree and a fellowship,
and to eat, drink and sleep the rest of his life!
The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a very small
compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an

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opportunity to know and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation

and imposture. The common people have the use of their limbs; for they
live by their labour or skill. They understand their own business and the
characters of those they have to deal with; for it is necessary that they
should. They have eloquence to express their passions, and wit at will to
express their contempt and provoke laughter. Their natural use of speech is
not hung up in monumental mockery, in an obsolete language; nor is there
sense of what is ludicrous, or readiness at finding out allusions to express it,
buried in collections of Anas. You will hear more good things on the
outside of a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a
twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous
university; and more home truths are to be learnt from listening to a noisy
debate in an ale house than from attending to a formal one in the House of
Commons. An elderly country gentlewoman will often know more of
character, and be able to illustrate it by more amusing anecdotes taken from
the history of what has been said, done, and gossiped in a country town for
the last fifty years, than the best blue-stocking 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 hypotheses on hypotheses, mountain high, till it is
impossible to come to 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
apprehension 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 defense of creeds and systems! How
much time and talents have been wasted in theological controversy, in law,
in politics, in verbal criticism, in judicial astrology and in finding out the art
of making gold! What actual benefit do we reap form the writings of a Laud
or Whitgift, or of Bishop Bull or Bishop Waterland, or
Prideaux' Connections or Beausobre, or Calmet, or St Augustine, or

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Puffendorf, or Vattel, or from the more literal but equally learned and
unprofitable labours of Scaliger, Cardan, and Scioppius? How many grains
of sense are there in their thousand folio or quarto volumes? What would
the world lose if they were committed to the flames to-morrow? Or are they
not already 'gone to the vault of all the Capulets'?Yet all these were oracles
in their time, and would have scoffed at you or me, at common sense and
human nature, for differing with them. It is our turn to laugh now.
To conclude this subject. The most sensible people to be met with in society
are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and
know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.
Women have often more of what is called good sense then men. They have
fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and judge of objects more
from their immediate and involuntary impression on the mind, and,
therefore, more truly and naturally. They cannot reason wrong; for they do
not reason at all. They do not think or speak by rule; and they have in
general more eloquence and wit, as well as sense, on that account. By their
wit, sense and eloquence together, they generally contrive to govern their
husbands. Their style, when they write to their friends (not for the
booksellers), is better than that of most authors. — Uneducated people have
most exuberance of invention and the greatest freedom from prejudice.
Shakespeare's was evidently an uneducated mind, both in the freshness of
his imagination and the variety of his views; as Milton's was scholastic, in
the texture both of his thoughts and feelings. Shakespeare had not been
accustomed to write themes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To
this we owe the unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. It we
wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we
wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may only study his
commentators.

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