On the record
Add to your virtue knowledge, says the apostle; but here the command is, Be-cloud and be-little by ignorance whatever virtue you may possess.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann critiques the idea of diminishing virtue through ignorance, contrasting it with the biblical call to add knowledge to virtue.
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They cannot do otherwise with laborers who work by compulsion, for the benefit only of their masters, and whose sole interest in the matter is to do as little and to consume as much as possible.
Yet, by denying education to the slave, you destroy not merely the right, but the power, of personal examination in regard to all that most nearly concerns the soul’s interests.
Mere knowledge, without the moral sense, can take no cognizance of the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong; and so the blind instinct, unguided by knowledge, will be forever at fault in its conclusions.
The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,--in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
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