From William Hazlitt's essay *On the Ignorance of the Learned* (1821). Select the word that fits the blank. "It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing ______."

Hazlitt's epigram: the worst illiterate is preferable to the person whose *only* capacity is reading and writing. The phrase *to do nothing ______* means *to be capable of nothing other than [reading/writing]*. The blank requires *else*: nothing else, nothing additional, nothing beyond. - The other options don't complete the idiom *to do nothing else* (meaning *to be capable of nothing else*).