10. But destroys the instruments of knowledge and communication.
Thus learned ignorance, and this art of keeping even inquisitive men
from true knowledge, hath been propagated in the world, and hath
much perplexed, whilst it pretended to inform the understanding. For
we see that other well-meaning and wise men, whose education and parts
had not acquired that acuteness, could intelligibly express themselves
to one another; and in its plain use make a benefit of language. But
though unlearned men well enough understood the words white and black,
&c., and had constant notions of the ideas signified by those words;
yet there were philosophers found who had learning and subtlety enough
to prove that snow was black; i.e. to prove that white was black.
Whereby they had the advantage to destroy the instruments and means of
discourse, conversation, instruction, and society; whilst, with
great art and subtlety, they did no more but perplex and confound
the signification of words, and thereby render language less useful
than the real defects of it had made it; a gift which the illiterate
had not attained to.
11. As useful as to confound the sounds that the letters of the
alphabet stand for. These learned men did equally instruct men's
understandings, and profit their lives, as he who should alter the
signification of known characters, and, by a subtle device of
learning, far surpassing the capacity of the illiterate, dull, and
vulgar, should in his writing show that he could put A for B, and D
for E, &c.
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