In those Protestant countries, accordingly, whose
Churches were not, as the Church of England always was, principally
political institutions--in Scotland, for instance, and the New England
States--an amount of education was carried down to the poorest of the
people, of which there is no other example; every peasant expounded the
Bible to his family (many to their neighbours), and had a mind practised
in meditation and discussion on all the points of his religious creed.
The food may not have been the most nourishing, but we cannot be blind
to the sharpening and strengthening exercise which such great topics
gave to the understanding--the discipline in abstraction and reasoning
which such mental occupation brought down to the humblest layman, and
one of the consequences of which was the privilege long enjoyed by
Scotland of supplying the greater part of Europe with professors for its
universities, and educated and skilled workmen for its practical arts.
This, however, notwithstanding its importance, is, in a comprehensive
view of universal history, only a matter of detail. We find no
fundamental errors in M. Comte's general conception of history.
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