and when those classes of society to which it particularly addresses itself were fully employed, and in the receipt of regular incomes.”
He was speaking, however, at a time when unemployment in the mills hovered between 15 and 20 percent, and wages had dropped a similar percentage over the past ten years. “A season of depression almost without a parallel ensued,” he told his audience, “and large numbers of young men…suddenly found their occupation gone and themselves reduced to very straitened and penurious circumstances.”
The downturn had led the Athenaeum—with its library of 6,000 volumes; classes for the study of languages, elocution, and music; exercise facilities; and regular programs of lectures and debate—to accumulate a debt of more than 3,000 pounds, Dickens told the audience; but the number of citizens willing to contribute a mere sixpence weekly for all the benefits had more than doubled in recent months, he said, and if more in the audience were willing to join, the amount of even that modest subscription would be reduced.
With that behind him, he launched into the meat of his address. There were a few “dead-and-gone” objections that had traditionally been raised against the formation of such institutions as the Athenaeum, he said, and their philosophy could be summed up in one short sentence: “How often have we heard from a large class of men wise in their generation, who would really seem to be born and bred for no other purpose than to pass into currency counterfeit and mischievous scraps of wisdom…that ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing.’”
Dickens paused for emphasis, then went on. “Why, a little hanging was considered a very dangerous thing, according to the same authorities, with this difference, that, because a little hanging was dangerous, we had a great deal of it; and, because a little learning was dangerous, we were to have none at all.”
We can imagine the roar of approval that those words brought from his audience. The lines carry the same pungency that had elevated the Sketches, and the observations of Pickwick ’s Sam Weller, and the bite that kept Oliver Twist from collapsing under the weight of its convictions.
Warming to his theme, Dickens continued, “I should be glad to hear such people’s estimate of the comparative danger of ‘a little learning’ and a vast amount of ignorance; I should be glad to know which they consider the most prolific parent of misery and crime.” At this point he turned personal. “I should be glad to assist them in their calculations,” he said of those who found learning a luxury, foreshadowing one of the plot devices of a certain novel-to-come, “by carrying them into certain gaols and nightly refuges I know of, where my own heart dies within me, when I see thousands of immortal creatures condemned…by years of this most wicked axiom.”
He proclaimed his belief that with the pursuit and accumulation of knowledge, man had the capacity to change himself and his lot in life. With learning, said Dickens, a man “acquires for himself that property of soul which has in all times upheld struggling men of every degree.” The more a man learns, Dickens said, “the better, gentler, kinder man he must become. When he knows how much great minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time…he will become more tolerant of other men’s belief in all matters, and will incline more leniently to their sentiments when they chance to differ from his own.”
He closed with the assertion to his Athenaeum audience that “long after your institution, and others of the same nature, have crumbled into dust, the noble harvest of the seed sown in them will shine out brightly in the wisdom, the mercy, and the forbearance of another race.” It was a speech that would have taken no more than ten or twelve minutes to deliver in its entirety, and yet in it, Dickens conveyed the essence of his most passionate beliefs: championing
He was speaking, however, at a time when unemployment in the mills hovered between 15 and 20 percent, and wages had dropped a similar percentage over the past ten years. “A season of depression almost without a parallel ensued,” he told his audience, “and large numbers of young men…suddenly found their occupation gone and themselves reduced to very straitened and penurious circumstances.”
The downturn had led the Athenaeum—with its library of 6,000 volumes; classes for the study of languages, elocution, and music; exercise facilities; and regular programs of lectures and debate—to accumulate a debt of more than 3,000 pounds, Dickens told the audience; but the number of citizens willing to contribute a mere sixpence weekly for all the benefits had more than doubled in recent months, he said, and if more in the audience were willing to join, the amount of even that modest subscription would be reduced.
With that behind him, he launched into the meat of his address. There were a few “dead-and-gone” objections that had traditionally been raised against the formation of such institutions as the Athenaeum, he said, and their philosophy could be summed up in one short sentence: “How often have we heard from a large class of men wise in their generation, who would really seem to be born and bred for no other purpose than to pass into currency counterfeit and mischievous scraps of wisdom…that ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing.’”
Dickens paused for emphasis, then went on. “Why, a little hanging was considered a very dangerous thing, according to the same authorities, with this difference, that, because a little hanging was dangerous, we had a great deal of it; and, because a little learning was dangerous, we were to have none at all.”
We can imagine the roar of approval that those words brought from his audience. The lines carry the same pungency that had elevated the Sketches, and the observations of Pickwick ’s Sam Weller, and the bite that kept Oliver Twist from collapsing under the weight of its convictions.
Warming to his theme, Dickens continued, “I should be glad to hear such people’s estimate of the comparative danger of ‘a little learning’ and a vast amount of ignorance; I should be glad to know which they consider the most prolific parent of misery and crime.” At this point he turned personal. “I should be glad to assist them in their calculations,” he said of those who found learning a luxury, foreshadowing one of the plot devices of a certain novel-to-come, “by carrying them into certain gaols and nightly refuges I know of, where my own heart dies within me, when I see thousands of immortal creatures condemned…by years of this most wicked axiom.”
He proclaimed his belief that with the pursuit and accumulation of knowledge, man had the capacity to change himself and his lot in life. With learning, said Dickens, a man “acquires for himself that property of soul which has in all times upheld struggling men of every degree.” The more a man learns, Dickens said, “the better, gentler, kinder man he must become. When he knows how much great minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time…he will become more tolerant of other men’s belief in all matters, and will incline more leniently to their sentiments when they chance to differ from his own.”
He closed with the assertion to his Athenaeum audience that “long after your institution, and others of the same nature, have crumbled into dust, the noble harvest of the seed sown in them will shine out brightly in the wisdom, the mercy, and the forbearance of another race.” It was a speech that would have taken no more than ten or twelve minutes to deliver in its entirety, and yet in it, Dickens conveyed the essence of his most passionate beliefs: championing
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