On the Ignorance of the Learned

Summary, Notes And Line By Line

Analysis In English By William Hazlitt

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Summary
3. The role of learning
4. The educated are not always the smartest people
5. The Importance of Learning
6. The inability to understand nature or art
7. The city or the country
8. The importance of creativity in uncovering the real and helpful
9. Conclusion

Introduction
Wordsworth and Coleridge were friends with the British essayist and writer William
Hazlitt (1788–1830). In the year 1822, he wrote the article “On the Ignorance of the
Learned.” Hazlitt persuasively makes the claim that formal education breeds
ignorance and animosity. He thinks that book learning cannot replace experience.

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One must actively participate in life, not merely read about it, in order to truly learn.
This specific article shows that Hazlitt was a little ahead of his time in terms of
reasoning when it came to formal education and in-depth practical experience.

Summary
The role of learning
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac do, like their letters, “put men’s reason back, and
divert their wits that attempt to understand it,” according to Samuel Butler. “Yet he
who is just able to express No Sense at All in various languages, Will pass for
learned than he who is known To articulate the strongest reason in his own,” the
proverb says.

The Tale of Custard the Dragon Class 10 S…

Authors and readers are the people who, among all others, have the fewest ideas.
It is preferable to be unable to read or write than to have no other means of
expression. A couch potato has neither the ability nor the will to pay attention to
what is happening around him or in his own head.
One may say that somebody carries their understanding around in their pocket or
leaves it at home on their library shelves. Books are more frequently used as blinds
to block away the powerful light and moving landscape of nature from weak eyes
and lazy dispositions than as “spectacles” to view it through. Too often, learning
serves as a counterbalance to common sense and a charade of real knowledge.

The educated are not always the smartest

people
The educated are merely literary slobs. When placed upon creative compositions,
their heads turn and they become disoriented. The practise of getting our thoughts
from outside sources “destroys the tone of the stomach” just as a course of dram
drinking does. The saying “guys who shine in school don’t make the greatest
figures when they grow up” is an old one.

Boys are expected to learn subjects at school that don’t involve the use of their
highest or most beneficial mental faculties.A child with a weak constitution and a
dull mind who can only recall what is pointed out to him is called an idler. He lacks
the ability to discern between things and the spirit to enjoy life on his own.

There is a certain level of idiocy that keeps kids from ever attaining these meagre
academic honours or learning the typical lessons. What is considered dumb is a
lack of enthusiasm in the dull and meaningless activities of academic study. The
most impressive abilities are both above and below this tedium. Our most brilliant
men haven’t always been known for their academic or professional
accomplishments.

The Importance of Learning

Learning is the acquisition of information that is not generally known to the public
and that we can only obtain through secondary sources such as books or other
man-made sources. It involves looking through their eyes, listening through their
ears, and basing our beliefs on their perceptions. The most educated man is most
knowledgeable about things that are the furthest from everyday life and direct
observation.

The erudite guy takes great satisfaction in his familiarity with names and dates
rather than people or things. He is capable of delivering a pretentious speech on all
the major historical figures. He is fluent in the majority of existing languages and
all of the extinct ones. But he is unable to write or speak his own language
correctly.

The second Greek scholar of his time was Richard Porson (1759–1808), whose
combination of talent and knowledge made the difference between him and the
first more obvious and perceptible. His success in fusing knowledge and talent
proved that he was an exception to the rule. The knowledgeable pedant only has
knowledge of books insofar as they are composed of other books, which are then
composed of yet more books, and so forth.

He is capable of translating a word into ten different languages, but he has no idea
what it means in any of them. He has little knowledge of Michael Angelo’s
imposing features or the works of Titian, Domenichino, Poussin, Guido, or the
Caracci.

The inability to understand nature or art

He is unable to understand the language of nature or art (which is another kind of
nature). He may have Claude’s Enchanted Castle or a print of Rubins’ Watering
Place hanging in his chambers for months without ever noticing them.

A professor who is well-versed in all the arts and sciences cannot reduce any of
them to practise. He has no knowledge of any liberal or mechanical art, profession,
trade, or game of chance. Learning is not a skill for surgery, farming, construction,
or working with wood or iron.

When a guy has cerebral palsy from birth, he is unable to run, walk, or swim, and he
views any others who can practise any of these mental or physical skills as vulgar
and mechanical. However, it takes a lot of time and experience, powers that were
designed for them, and a mindset that is especially devoted to them to know
almost any of them perfectly.

Because they make their living by their labour or expertise, common folks can still
use their limbs. They are aware of both their own affairs and the personalities of
others they must interact with. They possess the wit to convey disdain and the
eloquence to convey their sentiments. Their spoken language is used in a natural
way, unencumbered by massive irony.

The city or the country

People in towns are sadly lacking in understanding character since they only
perceive it as a bust and not as a whole. If you take a stagecoach from London to
Oxford, you’ll hear more positive things than if you spend a year hanging around
with Oxford undergraduates.

People in the country are aware of everything that has happened to a guy, can
identify his virtues and vices based on his appearance, and can explain a
contradiction in his behaviour by a breed cross that occurred fifty years ago. In
either the city or the country, the learned are ignorant of the situation.

The workers in this vineyard appear to be using conventional wisdom and

preconceived beliefs to undermine all sense of common sense and the
distinctions between good and evil. They build mountains of hypotheses on top of
one other, making it impossible to get the simple truth about any issue.

The importance of creativity in uncovering

the real and helpful
How little human understanding has been focused on uncovering the real and
helpful! How much creativity has been wasted in the name of certain beliefs and
institutions. What actual advantages do we gain from Laud or Whitgift’s writings?
Or have they not “gone to the tomb of all the Capulets” already?
Men of business and the world who argue from what they see and know, rather
than spinning webs of distinctions about how things should be, are the most
reasonable people you will ever meet in society. Because they have fewer
pretensions and are less involved in theories, women frequently possess more of
what is referred to as good sense than men.

Shakespeare had a clearly uneducated mind, as evidenced by the variety of his

viewpoints and the freshness of his imagination. Shakespeare was not used to
writing topics at school that argued for or against virtue. Shakespeare is a good
place to start if you want to understand the power of human brilliance.

Conclusion
Hazlitt makes a strong case—often exaggerating his points—that formal education
breeds idiocy and ignorance. Can we wonder at the languor and lassitude that is
thus caused by a life of educated ignorance and sloth, as he puts it?

He maintains that experience cannot be replaced by learning from books. Learning

is the acquisition of information that is not generally known to the public and that
we can only obtain through secondary sources such as books or other man-made
sources.
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