identally solicited to join
them. He would ask my permission, but I am absent. At length he goes. He
follows them in wild tumult and uproar for an hour. He sees some
galloping over hedges and ditches like madmen, and hazarding their
persons in a presumptuous manner. He sees others ride over the
cultivated fields of their neighbours, and injure the rising corn. He
finds that all this noise and tumult, all this danger and injury, are
occasioned by the pursuit of a little hare, whose pain is in proportion
to the joy of those who follow it. Now can this diversion, educated as
my child has been, fascinate him? Will he not question its innocence?
And will he not question its consistency as a natural pursuit, or as an
employment for his time?

It is thus then that knowledge will be found to operate as an artificial
and innocent preservative against the destructive pleasures of the
world. But prohibitions without knowledge will be but of little avail,
where there is a prospect of riches, and the power of gratifying any
improper appetites as they may arise. But by knowledge we shall be able
to discover the beauty of things, so that their opposites, or the things
prohibited, will cease to charm us. By knowledge we shall be able to
discern the ugliness of the things prohibited, so that we shall be
enabled to loathe them, if they should come into our way. And thus an
education, conducted upon the principles of knowledge, may operate to
the end proposed.

CHAP. V.

_Education continued, as consisting of knowledge and prohibitions--Good,
which the Quakers have done by prohibitions, without any considerable
knowledge--Greater good, which they would do with it--Knowledge then a
great desideratum in the Quaker education--Favourable state of the
society for the communication of it with purity, or without detriment to
morals--In what this knowledge should consist--General advantages of
it--Peculiar advantages, which it would bring to the society._

When we consider that men have all the same moral nature, we wonder, at
the first sight, at the great difference of conduct which they exhibit
upon earth. But when we consider the power of education upon the mind,
we seem to lose our surprize. If men in all countries were educated
alike, we should find a greater resemblance in their character. It is,
in short, education, which makes the man. And as education appears to me
to be of so much importance in life, I shall make it the subj