in which the notion of duty cannot be excluded, but enters as an essential element.  I cannot help fancying, that, if his principle be true, mankind ought to be much obliged to him; for he has exempted them from the necessity of acting in all the most important affairs of life.  For example, you are, I know, a great political philanthropist; you plead for the duty of enlightening the masses of the people on political questions, —­of making them intelligently acquainted with the main points of political and economical science.  You do not despair of all this?”

“I certainly do not,” said Fellowes.

“A most hopeless 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.