Does it prove much in favour of knowledge?
Pray, is not ignorance power too ?" RICCABOCCA.--"And a power that has had much the best end of the quarter-staff." PARSON.--"All evil is power, and does its power make it anything the better ?" RICCABOCCA.--"Fanaticism is power,--and a power that has often swept away knowledge like a whirlwind.

The Mussulman burns the library of a world, and forces the Koran and the sword from the schools of Byzantium to the colleges of Hindostan." PARSON (bearing on with a new column of illustration).--"Hunger is power.

The barbarians, starved out of their forests by their own swarming population, swept into Italy and annihilated letters.

The Romans, however degraded, had more knowledge at least than the Gaul and the Visigoth." RICCABOCCA (bringing up the reserve).--"And even in Greece, when Greek met Greek, the Athenians--our masters in all knowledge--were beat by the Spartans, who held learning in contempt." PARSON.--"Wherefore you see, Leonard, that though knowledge be power, it is only one of the powers of the world; that there are others as strong, and often much stronger; and the assertion either means but a barren truism, not worth so frequent a repetition, or it means something that you would find it very difficult to prove." LEONARD.--"One nation may be beaten by another that has more physical strength and more military discipline; which last, permit me to say, sir, is a species of knowledge--" RICCABOCCA.--"Yes; but your knowledge-mongers at present call upon us to discard military discipline, and the qualities that produce it, from the list of the useful arts.

And in your own Essay, you insist upon knowledge as the great disbander of armies, and the foe of all military discipline!" PARSON.--"Let the young man proceed.