Читать книгу Owen's Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question онлайн

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When the king praised his clerkly skill.

Thanks to Saint Bothan, son of mine,

Save Gawain, ne’er could pen a line:

So swore I, and so swear I still,

Let my boy bishop fret his fill.”

But the days are gone by when ignorance may be the safeguard of virtue. The only rock-foundation for virtue is knowledge. There is no fact, in physics or in morals, that ought to be concealed from the enquiring mind. Let that parent, who thinks to secure his sons’ honesty or his daughters’ innocence, by keeping back from them facts—let that parent know, that he is building up their morality on a sandy foundation. The rains and the floods of the world’s influence shall beat upon that virtue, and great shall be the fall thereof.

If man, then, can obtain control over this most important of instincts, it is, in principle, right that he should know it. If men, after obtaining such knowledge, think fit not to use it; if they deem it nobler and more virtuous, to follow each animal impulse, like the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, without a thought of its consequences, or an enquiry into its nature—then let them do so. The knowledge that they have the power to act more like rational beings, will not injure, if it fail to benefit them. They are at perfect liberty to set it aside, to neglect it, to forget it, if they can. Only let them show common sense enough to permit that others, who are more slow to incur sacred responsibilities, and more willing to give reason the control of instinct, should obtain the requisite knowledge, and follow out their prudent resolutions.