of such men is
not to do others' thinking for them, but to help them to think more
vigorously and effectually. Great minds are to make others great.
Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to
intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny,
but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for
themselves. The light and life which spring up in one soul are to be
spread far and wide. Of all treasons against humanity, there is no one
worse than his who employs great intellectual force to keep down the
intellect of his less favored brother.

It is sometimes surged by those who consider the multitude as not
intended to think, that at best they can learn but little, and that
this is likely to harm rather than to do them good. "A little
learning," we are told, "is a dangerous thing." "Shallow draughts" of
knowledge are worse than ignorance. The mass of the people, it is
said, can go to the bottom of nothing; and the result of stimulating
them to thought will be the formation of a dangerous set of
half-thinkers. To this argument I reply, first, that it has the
inconvenience of proving too much; for, if valid, it shows that none of
any class ought to think. For who, I would ask, can go to the bottom
of anything? Whose "learning" is not "little"? Whose "draughts" of
knowledge are not "shallow"? Who of us has fathomed the depths of a
single product of nature or a single event in history? Who of us is
not baffled by the mysteries in a grain of sand? How contracted the
range of the widest intellect! But is our knowledge, because so
little, of no worth? Are we to despise the lessons which are taught us
in this nook of creation, in this narrow round of human experience,
because an infinite universe stretches around us, which we have no
means of exploring, and in which the earth, and sun, and planets
dwindle to a point? We should remember that the known, however little
it may be, is in harmony with the boundless unknown, and a step towards
it. We should remember, too, that the gravest truths may be gathered
from a very narrow compass of information. God is revealed in his
smallest work as truly as in his greatest. The principles of human
nature may be studied better in a family than in the history of the
world. The finite is a manifestation of the infinite. The great
ideas, of which I have formerly spoken, are within the reach of every
man who thirsts for truth,