| | | | | THERE are some sorts of ignorance that are evidently not at all disagreeable | to, what we will call, their possessors. Indeed, pride in knowledge might | sometimes seem to have given place to pride in ignorance. We are used to | hear men boast of knowing nothing on such and such a subject, of being | profoundly ignorant on matters which engage the common attention, and of | which most people have a smattering; and we have learned to understand, by | the obtrusive confession, either that the speaker's time has been better | engaged, or that Nature, liberal to him in great things, has inflicted on him | some slight defect or incapacity separating him from less gifted men by an | idiosyncrasy. Or, it may be, he has such high and superior notions of what | constitutes knowledge, that nothing less than entire mastery, amounting to an | exclusive possession of a subject, deserves the name, and that everything | short of this is ignorance. Again, there is an honest philosophical ignorance | which must be rather pleasant, | | for it comes of clearness of perception. The very ignorance of certain | profound thinkers is impressive, and strikes awe. | In fact, there is a form of it | that only one of this sort can feel. Owing to the | lucidity of his thoughts, the | keenness of his apprehension in things which he does understand, he is alive | to a strange and startling contrast when by chance he falls on anything that | puzzles him. He finds himself pulled up; he is sensible of having arrived at | the traditional millstone; his reason is | consciously at fault, and straightway he | lays his finger on the dark spot, and says, "This is ignorance!" In such a | confession there can be no shame ~~ in fact, it is not so much he that is | ignorant as the human race of which he feels himself the representative. He | knows that what man sees he sees, but it is given to him to distinguish with | exactness between the light and the obscure; he is agreeably conscious of | being, in his own person, a test and gauge of mortal powers, a discoverer of | the limits of human thought. And if there | is satisfaction in these voyages into | unfathomable seas, there is another form of ignorance which surely supplies | heartier pleasures still. We do not | speak of that "ignorance which is bliss," for | this the child is restlessly bent on | exchanging for a painful knowledge, but of | that form of ignorance which, never being recognised at such, remains a | comfortable life-long companion; the ignorance, emphatically, of the vulgar, | that "blind and naked ignorance" which | | | | because, not knowing one thing more or better than another, and being | sustained by indomitable self-reliance, | it sincerely mistakes its uniformity of | defect for general enlightenment, and trusts its intuitions. Again, there is | feminine ignorance, recognised on all hands for what it really is, yet held in | high esteem as an engine of coquetry and as a conscious fascination. A pretty | or a charming woman feels herself more pretty and more charming for not | knowing anything hard, deep, or recondite. It costs her nothing to disown the | slightest acquaintance with the dead languages, or science, or anything that | calls for abstract thought. In the opinion of those whose approval she most | cares for, she might as well assume Miss Blimber's spectacles as shine in | anyone of them. | | These forms of ignorance are, however, one and all, remote from our present | theme, which is that ignorance of which some of us ~~ how many of us! ~~ | are conscious, and which is anything but pleasant. We speak of the ignorance | of which we make no parade, which is dragged from us against our will, or | unwittingly revealed while our good genius is sleeping, which has been with | some of us (till time and experience did their work of reassurance) our | skeleton in the closet, which any day might bring to light. For, though never | wholly got rid of, it is on the hope and sensitiveness of youth that this pain | presses most sorely. In those ingenuous days when the memory still tingles | with examinations, when we have not ceased to believe in the knowledge of | everybody else, when the phrases, "What | | every schoolboy knows," or "What every schoolboy would be birched for not | knowing," seem to mean what they say, then it is that we recognise what a | shameful thing it is not to know more. Then to stand convicted before our | fellow-men of not knowing certain facts, of having perpetrated some gross | blunder in what is assumed to be a common heritage of knowledge, is a blot | and a slur, and brings with it a sense of disgrace amounting to dishonour. He | has missed a very poignant and memorable sensation who has never blushed | in secret at some hideous lapse, nor for its | sake desired to hide his head from | the accusing light of day, realising in fancy what the Finger of Scorn must | mean. In truth, many a young man, not naturally cruel, has heard with a sense | of relief of the expatriation or even death of some witness of his shame ~~ | some one before whom, for instance, he has committed himself to an error of | some hundred years in a date, or has betrayed confusion about kings and | sides in the Wars of the Roses, or confounded the Vedas with the Sagas, or | not known the identity of St Austin with St Augustine, or has supposed "It | must be so," and the rest of it, to come in somewhere in Hamlet's soliloquy, | or that Haydn composed the "Messiah," or that Tycho Brahe lived before | Sanchoniathon, or has laid bare some extraordinary confusion of his mind | about eclipses of the moon. Not that he cares | about the Vedas or Sanchoniathon, but it is horrible | to be thought ignorant of the things that other | people know, or are supposed to know, or that he thinks he once did know, | only memory let | | them slip before it had fairly got hold of them. For the poor memory gets all | the blame, as if memory were responsible for what the attention never gave it | in charge. Treacherous memory, which with so many of us is responsible for | our ignorance! ~~ "with creeping crooked pace," grudging, vacillating, | uncertain, playing the part of that | Ignaro, "foster-father of the giant dead" ~~ | | | It is certain that in most of us, without any sense of amendment in ourselves, | this strong deep disgust at our ignorance passes with youth. We begin to | suspect great barren tracts in everybody's range of information. There are not | many people who do not betray a blank in some point where we had assumed | them to be well informed. Everybody commits himself in turn, not, perhaps, | in the way of conventional ignorance, but in ignorance of matters which it is | equal1y a disgrace not to know. For why should what men learn from books | and polished society be the only test? Why is it not as dishonourable to have | neglected the use of our eyes? A little experience convinces us that culpable | ignorance is not confined to the form of it which most vexes the detected | soul. The subject takes a more general form, apart from our consciousness, | and one which we can contemplate very much at our ease. | | | It is indeed wonderful how little some people contrive to learn of things that | it does not seem easy to help knowing, and it makes general progress the | more surprising when we consider how little it has been helped on by the | mass of mankind. The great proportion of those that live in towns, and have | before them all their lives the processes of building, the distinctions of | architecture, the suggestive hum of machinery, the varieties of merchandise, | the profusion of markets, are dead and blind not only to all that these things | teach, but to what is obtruded on their eyes | if it does not immediately concern | their own wants and vanities. Nor does the country tell them more. They will | not know from what hills the stream that waters | their fields has its source, or | towards what river it flows, or what counties and villages it passes by. They | cannot distinguish the note of the birds that have sung to them since they | were born. They have discovered nothing for themselves of the habits of | beasts or insects that have haunted their path or forced themselves on their | regard from childhood. They do not know the flowers at their feet, nor the | outline of the horizon their eye ever rests on. | We verily believe that there are | a good many highly educated people who could not for the life of them recall | the outline of a cow or a sheep without | ludicrous blunders. Why is not all this | universal knowledge? Why are the people who notice what comes before | them to be marked by a separating name and called naturalists? Why are we | ashamed of a failure in what comes to us through books and the | | costly instrumentality of masters and teachers ~~ why do we blush at any | flagrant slip in history, or science, or language ~~ and keep cool and easy | under any extravagance of error in what nature, through our own observation, | might teach us? There are, no doubt, plenty of | answers, still it is a question. | | In contemplating the general ignorance, and the popular injustice as to what | constitutes reprehensible ignorance, we thus grow less sensitive towards our | own. Also, be it added, there are forms of it which inevitably grow upon us. | There are a vast number of things which we knew as boys, and have | forgotten now, and we perceive that the knowledge and the ignorance are | much on a par. It was a knowledge of mere words, an imposture, fertilising | neither heart nor brain; we feel that, if it had entered into either, it would | have remained with us; or, being genuine knowledge, though no longer at our | fingers' ends, it may yet have done its work, and contributed something to | what there is good in us. Unquestionably, the mind that has learnt things and | forgotten them is on a wholly different and superior footing from that which | has never received the teaching. Thus most things learnt may be intended to | be partially forgotten in everything but the training they have given. | Cultivation is certainly consistent with a great deal of ignorance, if the | constant confession, "I do not know," is to be the criterion. | | In another respect, too, we learn to take our individual ignorance coolly. We | find we can fairly keep it out of sight | by a constant exercise of caution, and a | | sort of involuntary finesse which is itself an education. Society generally is | up to the fact that the polite assumption of universal knowledge in all its | members is an assumption. No well-bred person will | put it to the test. We do now and then come upon a questioner, a self-elected | social inspector, who does by society what a malignant school-inspector does | by a class - lay himself out to find, not what they | do | know, but what they do not. But society is up in | arms, and makes common cause against such disturbers of its smooth | equanimity. How differently does the polite example of that | the | thoroughly well-informed man, show himself! He takes for granted, not in | hypocrisy, but through mere genial good-nature and desire for sympathy, | some share of his own gifts in everyone he meets. "Everybody knows a little | Arabic," we once heard a pleasant man of this sort say in a mixed company, | to account for his being able to converse in that language. It was a | bona fide, though, | as it proved, ill-founded assumption, | which he would have been very far from putting to the proof, but which gave | everyone a little flavour of Arabic while the | conceit lasted. In the next place, | we find that the ignorance of which youth is | so sensitive is not the barrier it | was supposed to be. The world is not governed by those who know the most, | nor is it what men know, but what they do, that determines their place in the | world. How much ignorance, for example, is daily displayed by our leading | journalists! If, by chance, we happen to have real information on some | subject on which their graceful | | sentences flow so easily, we shall certainly detect error or misstatement ~~ | not intentional, but the result of ignorance. The writer is out in some | important particulars. There is a general air of | familiarity with the subject, of | knowing what he is about; but we see that he goes on assumptions for want | of knowing the facts. And yet the world would much rather receive its | impressions from a man who writes well than from an expert dryly up in his one | theme; and perhaps wisely, for the ignorance of the practised writer is | tempered by large general experience, which preserves him from flagrant | blunders, and may, likely enough, assist him to an approach to the truth | sufficient for general purposes. We are sure that, with some skilled confident | writers of this class, an ignorance which throws them upon their own | resources is better for their purpose than half-knowledge ~~ always an | uncertain, halting, hesitating guide, which simply puts them off the scent of | instinct. | | Intense as is the shame of convicted ignorance under | certain conditions, there is still a delightful | source of relief to the ingenious | mind in a frank confession, in making a clean breast of it, and revealing | blanks, smirches, confusions of memory, and even startling deficiencies in | the matter of "what every body knows," in showing ourselves to some | sympathising hearer (he must be sympathising) | just as we are. But if this self-portraiture | is not to our mind, and our ignorance in certain fashionable points | of knowledge presses on us, the thing to do is to get up some subject of | which we | | stand a chance of being sole student in our own circle. It | matters not how trifling the specialty, if a man only knows | something that nobody else knows, the world will respect | him. Only be an authority upon beetles, or even sea-weeds, | and you may have small Latin and less Greek, you may | know nothing of literature, and be grossly in the dark on | politics, and it may all tend to your honour. If you know | absolutely nothing else, how much you must know about | beetles! It is a case of concentration of the powers, of force | of will, of single aim, of that ardent, indomitable pursuit of | knowledge which is passion. And this is, perhaps, only a | caricature of the truth-a truth of which, in an age of new | sciences and perpetual discoveries, it is a comfort to be | reminded ~~ that a wise man must, after all, be content to | be ignorant of many things.