particulars, as if there had been so many distinct wrong principles, each
producing specifically its own bad effect. So that in that mind a few
false notions, and those the ones most likely to establish themselves
there, shall be virtually equivalent to a whole scheme of errors standing
formally in place of so many truths of which they are the reverse. And
thus the dark void of ignorance, instead of remaining a mere negation,
becomes filled with agents of perversion and destruction; as sometimes the
gloomy apartments of a deserted mansion have become a den of robbers and
murderers.

Such a friend of the people, then, as we were supposing to expend his life
and zeal on the object of rescuing them from their ignorance, would see in
that ignorance not only the privation of all direction and impulsion to
good, but a great positive force of determination toward evil.

But it may be alleged, that he would not find them _wholly_ destitute of
right information. True; but he would find that the small portion of
knowledge which an ignorant people did really possess, could be of little
avail. It is not only that, from the narrowness of its scope, knowledge so
scanty as to afford no principles directly adapted for application to a
vast number of matters of judgment and conduct, would of course be of
small use, though it _were_ efficient as far as it reached--of small use
though it _did_ produce that very limited quantity of good which ought to
be its proper share, in a due proportion to the larger amount of good to
be produced by a larger knowledge. This is not the whole of the
misfortune; it would not produce that proportionate share. For the fewer
are the points to which there is knowledge that can be applied, the less
availing is its application even to those few points. It shall be the kind
of knowledge apposite to them, and yet be nearly useless; from the obvious
cause, that a few just notions existing disconnected and confused among