the points of information thus demonstrated to be necessary, had no place
to shine or exist; of which minds, therefore, the estimates, passions,
volitions, principles of action with the actions also, were in so many
instances abandoned to take their chance for good or evil. But _had_ they
any chance for good in such an abandonment? What principle in their nature
was to determine them to good, with an impulse that rendered needless the
rational discrimination of it by the light of truth? It were an
exceedingly probable thing truly, that some happy instinct, or some
guiding star of good fortune, should have beguiled into an unknowing
choice of what is right, that very nature which knowledge itself,
including a recognition of the will of God, is so often insufficient to
constrain to such a choice.

But further; the absence of knowledge is sure to be something more and
worse than simple ignorance. Even were that absence but a mere negation, a
vacancy of truth, (the terms truth and knowledge may be used for our
present purpose as nearly synonymous, for what is not truth is not
knowledge,) it would be by its effect as a _deficiency_, incalculably
injurious. But it could not remain a mere deficiency: the vacancy of truth
would commonly be found replenished with positive error. Not indeed
replenished, (we are speaking of uncultivated persons,) with a
comprehensive and arranged set of false notions; for there would not be
thinking enough to form opinions in any sufficient number to be distinctly
and specifically the opposites to the many truths that were absent; but a
few false notions, such as could hardly fail to take the place of absent
truth in the ignorant mind, however crude they might be, and however
deficient for constituting a full system of error, would be sure to dilate
themselves so as to have an operation at all the points where truth was
wanting. It is frightful to see what a space in an ignorant mind one false
notion can occupy, working nearly the same effect in many distinct