Article March 2, 1907 Issue

ENLIGHTENMENT VS. IGNORANCE

FRANK BELL.

There would be less misconception of the Christian Scientist's insistence on the nothingness of all evil if it were understood as being similar to the schoolmaster's attitude toward ignorance. The schoolmaster knows that ignorance is essentially nothing,—a mere lack or negation, which disappears before knowledge,—yet he is profoundly impressed with the importance of rescuing his pupils from its direful effects. The teacher is not accused of inconsistency in devoting his time and effort almost exclusively to the work of eliminating that which he could not recognize as an entity; on the contrary, the world applauds the public educator and accords him a high position among the benefactors of the race.

Although the chief aim of the educator is the overcoming of ignorance, he really has nothing to do with ignorance itself, except constantly to know it as only a negation which wrongfully claims a place in the pupli's consciousness, distorting his concept of facts so as to make him believe the untrue to be true. This attitude of the schoolmaster toward ignorance—not ignoring it, but seeing it for what it claims to be and is not—is essential to his success. From such a view-point he sees clearly that the only remedy for ignorance is to supply the positive knowledge of which it is but the negation or supposititious lack.

A tremendous amount of human effort has been devoted to a systematic campaign against the nothingness of ignorance. Thousands of high-minded men and women have enlisted unreservedly in this cause. Private fortunes and public revenues have been appropriated to the establishment and maintenance of schools, colleges, and universities dedicated to the anti-ignorance crusade. The wonderful mechanism of printing, all the arts and sciences, as well as many other lines of human endeavor, have made common cause against the absence of knowledge; and indispensable to those engaged in all this educational effort has been the realization that despite the seeming prevalence of ignorance and its conspicuous part in the history of mankind, it is unlawful and unnecessary; that it can be blotted out; therefore, that they have a right to resist it,—to strive for and expect its ultimate annihilation.

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