Dunning

“ Now if such were the state of their intelligence, how would this friend of truth and the people find, how would he have expected to find, their piety, their morals, and their happiness affected by such destitution of knowledge? Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? We are supposing them to be in ignorance of four parts out of five, or perhaps of nine parts out of ten, of what the Supreme Wisdom was maintaining an extraordinary dispensation to declare to them. ”

“ Don't you see that a correct doctrine of ignorance is necessary for two reasons—first, on account of the false doctrine of ignorance universally prevalent, one which has hitherto rendered, and must ever render, anything like a scientific ontology impossible; and, secondly, because this correct theory of ignorance follows inevitably from my doctrine of knowledge? This, which I consider a very strong recommendation, an indispensable condition of the theory of ignorance, is the very ground on which you object to it. ”

“ But I have acquired one great piece of knowledge, which, had I not received a regular training, might have seemed to me as the arrogance of ignorance, and that is the fact that profound knowledge hurts the imagination. ”

“ Supposing the second to have any truth in it, the first will shew how the people may be kept in ignorance by the use of words which have a double meaning—how the ignorant may be kept in ignorance by telling them a story which they are to read one way, and that according to the common acceptation, while the knowing ones, the fraternity who have become philosophers, and have been admitted into the secret, may read, it in another. ”

“ If the results of the understanding go by the name of knowledge, then the higher teaching of the intellectual intuition may be called ignorance—ignorance, however, that is conscious of itself, docta ignorantia. ”

“ My son, these are silly, old world, notions that are only the outcome of superstition and ignorance; an ignorance that was the bane and the curse of past generations; an ignorance that wise people have rooted out thousands of years ago; an ignorance that must never again be tolerated, as all such superstitions are but an insult to intellectual refinement and knowledge. ”

“ And then this man, in learning the value of Ignorance, came perilously near believing that no man could know anything. He came dangerously near the belief that Knowledge is all a mirage toward which men journey hopelessly; a phantom to be grasped by no hand; a will-o'-the-wisp to be followed here and there but leading nowhere. He, for a little, said that Ignorance is the truest wisdom. ”

“ Its place is not to be sought without or beyond knowledge or ignorance, but between them. But is opinion to be sought without and beyond either of them, in a greater clearness than knowledge, or in a greater darkness than ignorance? ”

“ In discussing such matters as these, where our knowledge and our ignorance are so curiously blended together, and where it is so difficult to make men feel that so much ignorance can lie so close to so much knowledge;—to make them believe that they have been allowed to discover so much, and yet are not allowed to discover more:—we may be permitted to illustrate our meaning, by supposing a case of blended knowledge and ignorance, of real and imaginary discovery. ”

“ Would it be considered a sufficient reason for the absolute rejection of any of these facts—or a whole class of facts—that we are still ignorant of the principle upon which they depend, and that such knowledge is beyond our reach? Facts are every day believed, upon observation, or upon testimony, which we should be exceedingly puzzled to account for, if called upon to do so. ”

“ It is surprising how difficult one who attempts this rule finds it at first to provide himself with subjects for thought—to think of something that he does not know. In our ignorance our horizon is very contracted: mists, clouds, and darkness hang upon it, and self fills almost the entire view around, above, and below to the utmost verge. ”

“ Perhaps he of whom we say the last will be angry with us; can we pacify him without revealing the disorder of his mind? Suppose we say that, if he has knowledge we rejoice to hear it, but knowledge must be of something which is, as ignorance is of something which is not; 477and there is a third thing, which both is and is not, and is matter of opinion only. ”

“ And if, reflecting on this all-pervasive character of the Intelligible and of Intelligence, we formulate certain 'Laws of Thought', we are condensing into isolated judgements truth for which there is overwhelming evidence. Such judgements are 'indubitable'; for an intelligent doubt presupposes knowledge, and any and every knowledge inevitably, confirms them. ”

“ I do not think I shall ever be able to write a decent hand. One other piece of advice I must give you before I shut up; that is, never try to show off your knowledge, especially in scientific matters. It is a sin that certain persons we know have been guilty of. The first step is to learn your own ignorance, and if ever you feel inclined to make a display, you may be sure that you have as yet learned nothing. ”

“ Its quantity has distracted their attention from its quality. "Heu, quantum est quod nescimus!" exclaim they pathetically. "What an immensity of ignorance is ours!" True; but these whinings will never teach us what ignorance is, what its law is, and what its object is: and this alone is what we, as searchers after truth, are interested in finding out. To tell us how much a thing is, will never teach us what it is, as our psychologists, moralising on the boundlessness of human ignorance, seem to suppose. ”

“ Inasmuch as they have not apprehended the meaning of Knowledge, and have called by that name those images fashioned by their own fancy and which have sprung from the embodiments of ignorance, they therefore have inflicted upon the Source of Knowledge that which thou hast heard and witnessed.
For instance, a certain man,141 reputed for his learning and attainments, and accounting himself as one of the pre-eminent leaders of his people, hath in his book denounced and vilified all the exponents of true learning. ”

“ I love those words which mollify and moderate the temerity of our propositions, 'Peradventure, in some sort, 'tis said, I think,' and the like.... There is a sort of ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in honor and courage to knowledge; an ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than knowledge itself. ”

“ If we are ignorant at all (and who will question our ignorance?) we must be ignorant of something; and this something is not nothing, nor is it the contradictory. That is admitted on all hands. But every attempt to fix the object of our ignorance as anything but object + subject must have the effect of fixing it either as nothing, or as the contradictory. ”

“ Thus the main purpose of this section of the science is attained, which was to demonstrate the coincidence of the result of the agnoiology with the result of the epistemology, or to show that the only object of all knowledge is also the only object of all ignorance. (See Introduction, § 60.)
The object of ignorance is neither nothing nor the contradictory. 2. Novel, and somewhat startling, as this doctrine may seem, it will be found, on reflection, to be the only one which is consistent with the dictates of an enlightened common sense ”

“ Some faint glimmerings of common sense might sometimes pierce through the thick cloud of ignorance, or, what was worse, the illusions of perverted science, which had blotted out the sun, and enveloped the face of nature ”

“ But that is a familiar puzzle—the unexpected, startling ways in which knowledge juts out into ignorance and ignorance closes in upon knowledge, forming a coast line between the land of knowledge and the sea of ignorance more jagged than that of Alaska or Norway. The result is that each of us is a confused contention of wisdom and folly in which the imperious instincts of elemental passions and appetites, by their steady persistence, easily get their way. ”

“ The doctrine of ignorance entertained by psychology and common opinion.3. Hence the agnoiology hitherto propounded by philosophers, in so far as they have touched loosely on this subject, has been a tissue of contradictions, inasmuch as it represents us as ignorant of that which it is not possible for any intelligence to be ignorant of, and which we cannot suppose ourselves ignorant of without violating the first principle of reason. ”

“ But further; the absence of knowledge is sure to be something more and worse than simple ignorance. Even were that absence but a mere negation, a vacancy of truth, (the terms truth and knowledge may be used for our present purpose as nearly synonymous, for what is not truth is not knowledge,) it would be by its effect as a deficiency, incalculably injurious. But it could not remain a mere deficiency: the vacancy of truth would commonly be found replenished with positive error. ”

“ That which I am, thou art, and that also is this world, with its gods and heroes and mankind. Men contemplate distinctions, because they are stupefied with ignorance." "The words I and mine constitute ignorance. ”

“ It is impossible to think of the object of our ignorance, how then realize the ignorance whose very centre is a blank, a negation! When a man knows, then first he gets a glimpse of his ignorance as it vanishes. ”

“ Is it not laughable that the most positive of all the sciences should thus lend its angles and circles to the use of—what shall I call it?—the ignorance?—ay, that is the word—the ignorance of dealers in magic? ”

“ We must examine and fix what ignorance is—what we are, and can be, ignorant of. And thus we are thrown upon an entirely new research, constituting an intermediate section of philosophy which we term the Agnoiology, or theory of ignorance (λόγος τῆς ἀγνοίας) —the theory of true ignorance) . The result of this research is given out in its proper place in these Institutes.
Now we can settle the problem of ontology—and how.§ 60. Now our course is pretty dear, and our way made straight before us. The epistemology has fixed what alone any intelligence can know. ”

“ The mind is another name for ignorance, and an unreality appearing as a real entity. Here ignorance takes the name of the mind, and unreality passes under the title of reality. Ignorance is the want of true knowledge, as knowledge is the privation of ignorance.
19. Ignorance or false knowledge, is driven by our knowledge of truth; as the error of water in the desert, is dispelled by the knowledge of mirage. ”

“ They teach the elements really of ignorance, not of knowledge, for, to speak deliberately and in view of the highest truths, it is not easy to distinguish elementary knowledge. There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span. ”

“ It seems strange that such an instance as this, of the testimony of the senses pleaded with the most entire conviction in favour of something which was a mere inference of the judgment, and, as it turned out, a false inference, should not have opened the eyes of the bigots of common sense, and inspired them with a more modest distrust of the competency of mere ignorance to judge the conclusions of cultivated thought. ”

“ Whosoever perversely resolves to adhere to plans or opinions, be they right or be they wrong, because they have adopted them, raises an impassable bar to information. The wiser we are the more we are aware of the extent of our ignorance. ”

“ The discovery of your ignorance is the first great step you have made towards true knowledge. The veil is lifted up, and you now view those deep shades of the soul which were concealed from you by excessive presumption. In ascending an elevated spot, we gradually discover many things whose existence before was not suspected by us. ”

“ If, however, this is the work of all our science, then the conception of our human ignorance easily gets a provisional restatement. You are ignorant, in so far as you desire a knowledge that you cannot now get. Now, the knowledge you desire is, from our present point of view, no longer any knowledge of a reality foreign to all possible experience; but it is an adequate knowledge of the contents and the objects of a certain conceived or ideal sort of experience, called by you organised experience. ”

“ and that he knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance. ”

“ And so the learning of the world and the common mass of mind has, after nearly a century, to begin where the ostracised Mesmer left off—a long, dark, weary denial of the truth by the simple refusal to investigate. ”

“ But confirmations from experience are preferable, because the deductions of reason are not comprehended by many, and because they who have confirmed themselves in the contrary opinion, turn them into matters of doubt by reasonings drawn from the fallacies of the senses. ”

“ And the knower, as he knows, in and through his knowledge must always be compassing just that which is not impossible to him, but only unknowable—that is, impossible merely to his direct, formal knowledge. ”

“ The problem before you is, how the general ignorance is to be dispersed, and other people enabled to discriminate between the genuine and the other sort. Find the solution, Truth; for indeed it concerns you; Falsehood must not prevail; shall Ignorance shield the base while they counterfeit the good, and you never know it? ”

“ And again, if we embrace mere ignorance, we are in the position that, for anything we know, our highest beliefs are illusions, or at any moment may become so, and at any moment may be brought to nought by something—we do not know what. And I submit that the difference between such doctrines and those of this work is really considerable. ”

“ At its best, it is inexperience sitting in judgment on experience, ignorance on knowledge; ignorance which, never suspecting the existence of what it does not know, is equally careless and supercilious, making light of, if not resenting, all pretensions to have a judgment better worth attending to than its own. ”