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, etc., 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.
