task," said Harrington, "on Mr. Newman's principle.
The questions on which you seek to enlighten them are, many of them,
of the most intricate and difficult character,--are, all of them,
dependent on principles, and involve controversies, with which the
great bulk of mankind are no more competent to deal than with
Newton's 'Principia.' An easy, and often erroneous assent, on
ill-comprehended data, is all that you can expect of the mass; and
how can it be their duty, when it may often be their ruin, to act
upon this? A superficial knowledge is all that you can give them;
thorough investigation is out of the question. Most men, I fear, will
continue to believe it at least as possible for the common people
to form a judgment on the validity of Paley's 'Evidences,' as on
the reasonings of Smith's 'Political Economy.' They will say, if
the common people can be sufficiently sure of their conclusions in
the latter case to take action upon them,--that is, to render action
a duty,--the like is possible in the former. Should you not hold by
your principle, and say, that, as from the difficulty of the
investigation it is not possible for the bulk of mankind to attain
such a degree of certainty as to make belief in an 'historical religion'
a duty, so neither, for the like reason, can it be their duty to come
to any definite conclusion, or to take any definite action, in relation
to the equally difficult questions of politics, legislation, political
economy, and a variety of other sciences? I will take another case.
I believe you will not deny that you are profoundly ignorant of medicine,
nor that, though the most necessary, it is at the same time the most
difficult and uncertain of all the sciences. You know that the great
bulk of mankind are as ignorant as yourself; nay, some affirm that
physicians themselves are about as ignorant as their patients; it
is certain that, in reference to many classes of disease, doctors
take the most opposite views of the appropriate treatment, and even
treat disease in general on principles diametrically opposed! A more
miserable condition for an unhappy patient can hardly be imagined.

"Though our own life, or that of our dearest friend in the world, hangs
in the balance, it is impossible for us to tell whether the art of
the doctor will save or kill. I doubt, therefore, whether you ought
not to conclude, from the principle on which we have already said so
much, that God cannot have made it a poor