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Page 1 of 11930 · PDF PAGE 11
…t under strong suspicion of heresy. I need not quote the obvious names. But there were certain bodies of people who did carry on the old knowledge, mostly by oral tradition, and who were perforce tolerated to a certain extent, because even the little knowledge that they did possess was so exceedingly useful. The best way to make armour, or to build Cathedrals, or to heal sickness would enable the Christian to get ahead of his friends. Therefore, although conscience evidently demanded the maximum amount of persecution compatible with the existen…
1930 · PDF PAGE 10
…ark ages, when Christianity held unchallenged sway over those portions of this globe which it had sufficiently corrupted, the pursuit of knowledgeknowledge of any kindwas justly estimated by the people in power as the one and only dangerous pursuit. Even so, as late as 300 years ago, it was not considered very gentlemanly to be able to read and write. I am not sure that it is. In any case, it is a great error in education to teach these things. Grammar, we must never forget, appears in the word Gramarye, beloved of Sir Walter Scott, and …
1930 · PDF PAGE 6
universe of discourseby the word knowledge. May I ask a question ? Does anyone here know the date of the battle of Waterloo ? Pause. (SomeoneI bettells me 1815.) Thank you very much. To be frank with you, I knew it myself. I did not require information on that particular point. What I asked was, whether anyone know the date. I felt that, if so, it would have created a sympathetic atmosphere. But since we are talking about Waterloo, we may ask ourselves what, roughly speaking, is the extent of our knowledge ? I have heard plenty of theo…
1930 · PDF PAGE 13
…owds in the Square of St. Mark and waited, howling, for the end of the world. It was accordingly easy enough to associate the pursuit of knowledge with the most abominable crimes, real or imaginary or both. For this reason, we hearnot as a demonstrated thesis, but as a commonplace of inherited knowledgethat Jews were sorcerers and wizards. In other words, they know something about grammar. We heard that they transformed themselves into cats or bats, and sucked peoples big toes. I have never, personally, investi- gated the question as to whet…
1930 · PDF PAGE 4
…ad been asked to lecture a distinguished group of people. What bothered him was this : what assumption was he to make about the existing knowledge of the audience ? He adopted the sensible course of asking the advice of an old hand at the game ; and was told You must do one of two things. You may assume that they know everything, or that they know nothing. Thomas Henry thought it over, and decided that he would assume that they know nothing. I think that merely shows how badly brought up he must have been ; and explains how it was that he be…
1930 · PDF PAGE 5
…, especially if conducted with blackthorns or shotguns, where as lecturing is merely an attempt, foredoomed to failure, to com- municate knowledge which usually the lecturer does not possess. I am sure that we all recognize that an attempt of this kind is impossible in nature. No ! I am not proposing to inflict upon you my celebrated discourse on Scepticism of the Instrument of Mind. I am not even going to refer to the first and last lecture which I suffered at a dud university some- where near Newmarket, in which the specimen of old red sandst…
1930 · PDF PAGE 17
…ing candles of infants fat and digging up corpses to economise on the butchers bill, the surgeonthat is to say, the man in pursuit of knowledge which it is hoped may alleviate human painis the same kind of animal as the witch and the ritual-murdering Jew. It is, no doubt, because it is a part of the old taboo complex about the corpses of ones relatives,
1930 · PDF PAGE 12
…s are always telling us, the Church has a monopoly of logic, and the Pope argued that all Jews were communists. Anyone who had or wanted knowledge must be a Jew, and therefore a communist, and thereforewell, the Pope too believed in preparedness, though he probably called it a programme of disarmament. When people scrap battleships in the name of peace on earth and goodwill to men, it means that they have found battleships useless and too expensive, and that they have found something cheaper and more deadly. So the Curia kept a weapon in reser…