The state of ignorance in which, among us, owing to our isolated and entirely individual life, those remain who have not passed through the schools, was unknown in those societies where moral culture, and especially the general spirit of the age, was transmitted by the perpetual intercourse of man with man.

The Arab, who has never had a teacher, is often, nevertheless, a very superior man; for the tent is a kind of school always open, where, from the contact of well-educated men, there is produced a great intellectual and even literary movement.

The refinement of manners and the acuteness of the intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call education.

It is the men from the schools, on the contrary, who are considered badly trained and pedantic.

In this social state, ignorance, which, among us, condemns a man to an inferior rank, is the condition of great things and of great originality.
[Footnote 1: Mishnah, _Shabbath_, i.