20
THE BATTALION.
The base and common-place Mexican donkey, has more
physical power, to carry a load of fagots, than that grand in
ventor who first harnessed the lightning and caused it to pro
pel our cars, drive our machinery and turn night into day by
its brilliant light.
‘'Wealth is power,” to oppress. “Knowledge is power,” to-
bless—a broad distinction but true.
Knowledge is valuable for the pleasure it imparts, tor the
permanent wealth it secures and for its enobling effects upon
the mind. Its excellence is more strongly illustrated by
comparing it with ignorance. “The ignorant man,” says a
writer of antiquity, “is dead even while he walketh. He i&
numbered with the living, but he does not exist.”
The strong prejudices and narrow range of thought which
are common to the unfurnished mind are obvious to all who
come in contact with it. Rude manners and a contempt for
just laws distinguish an uneducated community. “Learning,”
said Lord Bacon, “doth make the mind gentle, generous,
and pliant to government,while ignorance leaveth it churlish,,
thwarting, and mutinous;” and history proves this to be true
inasmuch as’the most barbarous and unlearned times have
been most subject to tumult, seditions and violence. Tho
same conditions exist among the nations now.
The treasures of knowledge have been pronounced by the
wise of all ages as infinitely superior to gold that perishes.
Knowledge has a property of resisting accident and adhering
to its possessor when all things else forsake him. The winds
cannot sweep it away, nor flames devour, nor floods dissolve.
“All that I have is about me” said the poet Simonides^ with
perfect calmness, when in the midst of tempest and shipwreck
his companions were loading themselves with their most cost
ly effects before plunging into the waves. A treasure over
which the elements have no power is surely worth the labor
required for its acquisition.
The error is sometimes made of estimating knowledge prin
cipally as an instrument of pecuniary gain. Those who hold