"Not so," says the modern philosopher; "a little knowledge; is safer than
no knowledge." Possibly, as all individuals and all communities must go
through the stage of a little knowledge before they can arrive at that of
much knowledge, the philosopher's assertion may be right in the long-run,
and applied to humankind in general. But there is a period, as there is
a class, in which a little knowledge tends to terrible demoralisation.
And Armand Monnier lived in that period and was one of that class. The
little knowledge that his mind, impulsive and ardent, had picked up out
of books that warred with the great foundations of existing society, had
originated in ill advices. A man stored with much knowledge would never
have let Madame de Grantmesnil's denunciations of marriage rites, or
Louis Blane's vindication of Robespierre as the representative of the
working against the middle class, influence his practical life. He would
have assessed such opinions at their real worth; and whatever that worth
might seem to him, would not to such opinions have committed the conduct
of his life. Opinion is not fateful: conduct is. A little knowledge
crazes an earnest, warm-blooded, powerful creature like Armand Monnier
into a fanatic. He takes an opinion which pleases him as a revelation
from the gods; that opinion shapes his conduct; that conduct is his fate.
Woe to the philosopher who serenely flings before the little knowledge of
the artisan dogmas as harmless as the Atlantis of Plato if only to be
discussed by philosophers, and deadly as the torches of Ate if seized as
articles of a creed by fanatics! But thrice woe to the artisan who makes
himself the zealot of the Dogma!

Poor Armand acts on the opinions he adopts; proves his contempt for the
marriage state by living with the wife of another; resents, as natures so
inherently manly must do, the Society that visits on her his defiance of
its laws; throws himself, head foremost, against that society altogether;
necessarily joins all who have other reasons for hostility to Society; he