But the _Advancement_ was the first of a long line of books which have attempted to teach English readers how to think of knowledge; to make it really and intelligently the interest, not of the school or the study or the laboratory only, but of society at large.
It was a book with a purpose, new then, but of which we have seen the fulfilment.

He wanted to impress on his generation, as a very practical matter, all that knowledge might do in wise hands, all that knowledge had lost by the faults and errors of men and the misfortunes of time, all that knowledge might be pushed to in all directions by faithful and patient industry and well-planned methods for the elevation and benefit of man in his highest capacities as well as in his humblest.

And he further sought to teach them _how_ to know; to make them understand that difficult achievement of self-knowledge, to know _what it is_ to know; to give the first attempted chart to guide them among the shallows and rocks and whirlpools which beset the course and action of thought and inquiry; to reveal to them the "idols" which unconsciously haunt the minds of the strongest as well as the weakest, and interpose their delusions when we are least aware--"the fallacies and false appearances inseparable from our nature and our condition of life." To induce men to believe not only that there was much to know that was not yet dreamed of, but that the way of knowing needed real and thorough improvement; that the knowing mind bore along with it all kinds of snares and disqualifications of which it is unconscious; and that it needed training quite as much as materials to work on, was the object of the _Advancement_.

It was but a sketch; but it was a sketch so truly and forcibly drawn, that it made an impression which has never been weakened.

To us its use and almost its interest is passed.