The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1888-08-09
The Advantages Of Ignorance.

In every walk of life, in all professions,
similar superiority (ofignorance over
wisdom) is daily manifest. At the polls,
the trained and intelligent statesman is
defeated by the loud.mouthed stump.
speaker, who knows nothing of jarispru-
dence, less of political economy, and only
enough of finance to be able to draw and
spend his salary with commendable reg.
ularity. The broadly educated, highly
cultivated theologisn is surpassed in
popular esteem by the staggering revi.
valist, who tears up human feelings by
the roots as child pulls up sprouting
beans for growing the wrong way. In
medicine, the quack has FIVE times the
patronage of the we'll informed physician,
and makes q fat living where the latter
would only starve. Sick people are tond
of liberal trestment, and like to be
thought worse off than they really are.
You have slight cold, and good doc.
tor charges FIVE dollars for curing you:
But the brilliant empiric calls it conges.
ton of the lungs, diphtheria, or pneu.
monia, visits you twice as often, and
charges three times as much, and you
feel that you have got great deal more
for your money. Your own ignorance
chimes in with his, and both are better
satisfied. Your stomach.sche is magni.
fed in to gastric fever; your boil becomes
an incipient cancer; a slight chill
indicates approaching typhoid. The
quack Hatters your self love, exalts your
own importance in exaggerating that Of
your disease, comforts you with good,
sympathetic scare, and depletes your
veins and your pockets with admirable
equanimity.
The old saying that "fools rush in
where angels fear to tread" affords
another argument in behalf of the fool.
To be sure, the natural history of the
angel species has been imperfectly
studied yet here again our very igno.
rance helps us. theoretically, We should
all like to be angels; but, practically,
we prefer to stay where we are. Besides,
familiarity with angels might be exceed.
iogly uncomfortable especially if they
should take it into the ghosts of their
late heads to visit us in spook- fashion,
with the accompaniments of blue.fre
and winding.sheets. But to the point
again. Education makes men cautious
and calculating; careful of precedents
afraid of mistakes Many time the
brilliant audacity of daring ignoramus
has achieved successes which would have
been unattainable to orderly skill and
training. Lord Timothy Dexter, that
most inspired of idiots, sent cargo of
warming pans to the West Indies. The
natives took the bottoms for sugar scoops
and the perforated lids for strainers, and
Dexter gained a fortune out of his
ridiculous venture. Zachry Taylor,
whipped by Mexican army, was too bad
q soldier to be conscious of his defeat,
and kept on fighting. His adversaries,
astonished at his perseverance, thought
he must have hidden reserves, aud
incontinently ran away. Thus Taylor
won the battle, as contemporaries say "by
sheer pluck and awkardness." Against
stupidity the gods themselves fight po".
erless." Stupidity, therefore, by all the
rules of logic, must be superior to sense,
and truly deserves, over all competitors,
the crown of laurel Clarke, in Popular
Science Monthly.