one thing, Obstinate all his days was a densely ignorant man. He had not
got into the way of learning his lessons when he was a child; he had not
been made to learn his lessons when he was a child; and the dislike and
contempt he had for his books as a boy accompanied him through an
ignorant and a narrow-minded life. It was reason enough to this so
unreasonable man not to buy and read a book that you had asked him to buy
and read it. And so many of the books about him were either written, or
printed, or published, or sold, or read, or praised by people he did not
like, that there was little left for this unhappy man to read, even if
otherwise he would have read it. And thus, as his mulish obstinacy kept
him so ignorant, so his ignorance in turn increased his obstinacy. And
then when he came, as life went on, to have anything to do with other
men's affairs, either in public or in private life, either in the church,
or in the nation, or in the city, or in the family, this unhappy man
could only be a drag on all kinds of progress, and in obstacle to every
good work. Use and wont, a very good rule on occasion, was a rigid and a
universal rule with Obstinate. And to be told that the wont in this case
and in that had ceased to be the useful, only made him rail at you as
only an ignorant and an obstinate man can rail. He could only rail; he
had not knowledge enough, or good temper enough, or good manners enough
to reason out a matter; he was too hot-tempered for an argument, and he
hated those who had an acquaintance with the subject in hand, and a self-
command in connection with it that he had not. 'The obstinate man's
understanding is like Pharaoh's heart, and it is proof against all sorts
of arguments whatsoever.' Like the demented king of Egypt, the obstinate
man has glimpses sometimes both of his bounden duty and of his true
interest, but the sinew of iron that is in his neck will not let him
perform the one or pursue the other. 'Nothing,' says a penetrating
writer, 'is more like firm conviction than simple obstinacy. Plots and
parties in the state, and heresies and divisions in the church alike