23 July 1810 21

Fallacies Ch | | Cause and Obstacle

| | Universities 1. Virtue

| | 1. Virtue Universities

If at their word /nod/ vice and virtue can in this instance be made to change their nature, so may they in every other instance in which it can happen to them to see their advantage in such changes: 1 the grossest absurdity /absurdities/ may be made /taken/ to pass for good sense /sense and reason/, /form inquiry may be considered /regarded/ as privation instead of /and not/ promotion of true knowledge/ 2 useless observances /practices/ to pass for meritorious services, 3 idleness may be regarded /accepted/ as constituting as fit /as no less/ a return as laborious service for pay alotted to the purchase of laborious service 4 sinecures as being no less conducive to instruction as well as to good government than the most efficient offices, 5 instruction as being no less effectually conveyed by the sight of antique walls and masquerade habits as /than/ by reading or speaking on the part of hearers, 6 and the efficiency of it as being proportioned not to the quality and quantity not of the information given /instruction afforded/ by them but of the money pocketed by them, and the ease enjoyed by them: anbd in a word /to sum up all in a few words/ whatsoever among the obstacles to virtue and learning one subservient to their separate and sinister interest, may be made to pass for causes.

So long as this habit /During the continuance and in virtue/ of blind confidence and obsequieousness they enjoy over and in relation to the laws of morality a sort of dispecsing power: by arts similar to those practiced by the Jesuits theu acquire and retain a species of power similar to that which was acquired and so long retained by the order of Jesuits.