By a little industry in the pursuit of ignorance greater repose would be attained in the immediate future. It would be very difficult to prove that up to this hour progress has been of the slightest use or pleasure to man. Higher pleasures, higher pains. Complexities of consciousness are merely a source of distraction from centralisation. The jelly fish may, after all, be the highest ideal of living things, and we may, if the phrase be admitted, have been developing backward from him. Of all the creatures on earth man is the most stuck up. He arrogates everything to himself and because he can split a flint or make a bow or gun-barrel he thinks he centres the universe, and insists that the illimitable deeps of space are focused upon him. Astronomers, a highly respectable class of people, assert there are now visible to us one hundred million fixed stars, one hundred million suns like our own. Each may have its system of planets, such as earth, and each planet again its attendant satellites. With that splendid magnanimity characteristic of our race, man would rather pitch the hundred million suns into chaos than for a moment entertain the idea that he is a humbug and of no use whatever. And yet after all the jelly-fish may be a worthier fellow than the best of us.
I do not of course insist on reversion to the jelly-fish. In this climate his habits of life are too suggestive of ague and rheumatism. In fact I do not know that I am urging reversion to anything, even to the flocks of pastoral man. But I am saying that as myriads of facilities are given for acquiring knowledge, one humble means ought to be devised for acquiring ignorance. If I had anywhere met with the encouragement which I think I merited, I should have undertaken to write the book myself.
I should open by saying it was not until I had concluded a long and painful investigation that I considered myself in any way qualified to undertake so grave and important a task as writing a guide to ignorance: that I had not only inquired curiously into my own fitness, but had also looked about carefully among my friends in the hope of finding some one better qualified to carry out this important undertaking. But upon gauging the depth of my own knowledge and considering conscientiously the capacity of my acquaintances, I came to the conclusion that no man I knew personally had so close a personal intimacy with ignorance as myself. There are few branches, I may say no branch, of knowledge except that of ignorance in which any one of my friends was not more learned than myself. I was born in such profound ignorance that I had no personal knowledge of the fact at the time. I had existed for a long time before I could distinguish between myself and things which were not.
As a boy I was averse from study; and since I have grown to manhood I have acquired so little substantive information that I could write down in a bold hand on one page of this book every single fact, outside facts of personal experience, of which I am possessed.
I know that the Norman invasion occurred in 1066, and the Great Fire in 1666. I know that gunpowder is composed of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, and sausages of minced meat and bread under the name of Tommy. I am aware Milton and Shakespeare were poets, and that needle-grinders are short lived. I know that the primest brands of three-shilling champagnes are made in London. I can give the Latin for seven words, and the French for four. I can repeat the multiplication table (with the pence) up to six times. I know the mere names of a number of people and things; but, as far as clear and definite information goes, I don’t believe I could double the above brief list. I am, I think, therefore, warranted in concluding that few men can have a more close or exhaustive personal acquaintance with ignorance. If you want learning at secondhand you must go to the learned: if you want ignorance at first hand you cannot possibly do better than come to me.
In the first place let us consider the “Injury of Knowledge.” How much better off the king would be if he had no knowledge! Suppose his mental ken had never been directed to any period before the dawn of his own memory, he would have no disquieting thoughts of the trouble into which Charles I. or Richard II. drifted. He would be filled with no envy of the good old King John, who, from four or five ounces of iron in the form of thumb-screws, and a few hundredweight of rich Jew, filled up the royal pockets as often as they showed any signs of growing empty. And, above all, he would be spared the misery of committing dates to memory. How it must limit the happiness of a constitutional sovereign to know anything about the constitution! Why should he be burdened with the consciousness of rights and prerogatives? Would he not be much happier if he might smoke his cigar in his garden without the fear of the Speaker or the Lord Chancellor before his eyes? The Commons want their Speaker, the Lords want their Lord Chancellor—let them have them. The king wants neither. Why should he be troubled with any knowledge of either? Although he is a king is he not a man and a brother also? Why should he be worried out of his life with reasons for all he does? The king feels he can do no wrong. That ought to be enough for him. Most men believe the same thing of themselves, but few others share the faith. The king can do no wrong, then in mercy’s name let the man alone. Suppose it is a part of my duty to look out of the oriel window at dawn, noon, and sunset, why should I be bored with cause, reason, and precedent for this? Let me look out of window if it is my duty to do so; but, before and after looking out of the window, let me enjoy my life.
Take the statesman. How knowledge must hamper him! He is absolutely precluded from acting with decision by the consciousness of the difficulties which lay in the path of his predecessors. He has to make up his subject, to get facts and figures from his subordinates and others. He has to arrange the party manœuvres before he launches his scheme, by which time all the energy is gone out of him, and he has not half as much faith in his bill as if he had never looked at the pros and cons. “Never mind manœuvring, but go at them,” said Nelson. The moment you begin to manœuvre you confess your doubtfulness of success, unless you can take your adversary at a disadvantage; but if you fly headlong at his throat, you terrify him by the display of your confidence and valour.
The words of Nelson apply still more closely to the general. His knowledge that fifty years ago the British army was worsted on this field, unnerves, paralyses him. If he did not know that shells are explosive and bullets deadly, he would make his dispositions with twice the confidence, and his temerity would fill the foe with panic. His simple duty is to defeat the enemy, and knowing anything beyond this only tends to distract his mind and weaken his arm. In the middle of one of his Indian battles, and when he thought the conflict had been decided in favour of British arms, a messenger rode hastily up to the general in command, who was wiping his reeking forehead on his coat-sleeve: “A large fresh force of the enemy has appeared in such a place; what is to be done?” Gough rubbed his forehead with the other sleeve, and shouted out, “Beat ’em!” Obviously no better command could have been given. What the English nation wanted the English army to do with the enemy was to “beat ’em.” In the pictures of the Victoria Cross there is one of a young dandy officer with an eyeglass in his eye and a sword in his hand, among the thick of the foe. He knows he is in that place to kill some one. He is quite ignorant of the fact that the enemy is there to kill him, and he is taking his time and looking through his eyeglass to try to find some enticing man through whom to run his sword. One of Wellington’s most fervent prayers was, “Oh, spare me my dandy officers!” Now dandies are never very full of knowledge, and yet the greatest Duke thought more of them than of your learning-begrimed sappers or your science-bespattered gunners.
If an advocate at the bar knew one quarter of the law of the land, he could never get on. In the first place, he would know more than the judges, and this would prejudice the bench against him. With regard to a barrister, the best position for him to assume, if he is addressing a jury, is, “Gentlemen, the indisputable facts of the case, as stated to you by the witnesses, are so-and-so. In presence of so distinguished a lawyer as occupies the bench in this court, I do not feel myself qualified to tell you what the law is; that will be the easy duty of his lordship.” Even in Chancery cases, the barrister would best insure success by merely citing the precedent cases, in an off-hand way, “Does not your lordship think the case of Burke v. Hare meets the exact conditions of the one under consideration?” The indices are all the pleader need look at. The judge will surely strain a point for one who does not bore him with extracts and arguments, but leaves all to himself, and lets the work of the court run smoothly and just as the president wishes.
Knowledge is an absolute hindrance to the doctor of medicine. Supposing he is a man of average intelligence (some doctors are), he is able to diagnose, let me say, fever. You or I could diagnose fever pretty well—quick pulse, dry skin, thirst, and so on. But as the doctor leans over the patient, he is paralysed by the complication of his knowledge. Such a theory is against feeding up, such a theory against slops, such a theory against bleeding, such a theory in favour of phlebotomy; there are the wet and the dry, the hot and the cold methods; and while the doctor is deliberating, vacillating, or speculating, the patient has ample opportunity of dying, or nature of stepping in and curing the man, and thus foiling the doctor. Is there not much more sense and candour in the method adopted by the Irish hunting dispensary doctor, who, before starting with the hounds, locked up all drugs, except the Glauber’s salts, a stone or two of which he left in charge of his servant, with instructions it was to be meted out impartially to all comers, each patient receiving an honest fistful as a dose? It is a remarkable fact that within this century homœopathy has gained a firm hold on an important section of the community, and yet, notwithstanding the growth of what the allopathists or regular profession regard as ignorant quackery, the span of human life has had six years added to it in eighty years. Still homœopathy is a practical confession of ignorance; for it says, in effect, “We don’t know exactly what Nature is trying to do, but let us give her a little help, and trust in luck.” Whereas allopathy pretended to know everything and to fight Nature. Here, in the result of years added to man’s life by the development of the ignorant system, we see once more the superiority of ignorance over knowledge.