This, Thomas Henry Huxley’s reason to educate the masses, is light years from Donald Trump’s:
The politicians tell us, “You must educate the masses because they are going to be masters”. The clergy join in the cry for education, for they affirm that the people are drifting away from church and chapel into the broadest infidelity. The manufacturers and the capitalists swell the chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance makes bad workmen; that England will soon be unable to turn out cotton goods, or steam engines, cheaper that other people; and the, Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory will be departed from us. And a few voices are lifted up in favour of the doctrine that the masses should be educated because they are men and women with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and suffering, and that it is as true now, as ever it was, that the people perish for lack of knowledge.
(Quoted from page 304 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
For a brief biography of Thomas Henry Huxley, click here. For images of or relating to Thomas Henry Huxley, click here.
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