Know Nothing

“ And the infinity of knowledge to be acquired runs parallel with the infinite faculty of knowing, and its development. Sometimes I feel reconciled to my extreme ignorance, by thinking, If I know nothing, the most learned know next to nothing. ”

“ For, do we not all stand in awe of that which we cannot explain, of that which, if it be not in our own experience, is certainly recorded in the experience of others, of that of which we know and can know nothing? ”

“ And if you are a dunce, which I cannot admit—well, that can be mended, you know. Are we not all dunces? I remember a very wise man saying once that we know nothing until we know that we know nothing. Do you understand that? ”

“ How can one be curious to know one does not know what; and perpetually curious to know? Has one nothing to do but to hear and relate something new? And why can one care about nothing but what one does not know? ”

“ But we have still to deal with the unknown in two more troublesome senses. It may stand for a mere possibility about which we know nothing further, and for entertaining which we can find no further ground. ”

“ I allow that no man can wholly discover so great a mystery in this life, and I do not desire you to do what no man can do, but only to explain it according to your ability. For you will sooner convince me that deeper reasons lie concealed in this matter, by showing some one that you know of, than if, by saying nothing, you make it appear that you do not understand any reason. ”

“ I sought in all the sciences, but far from finding what I wanted, became convinced that all who like myself had sought in knowledge for the meaning of life had found nothing. And not only had they found nothing, but they had plainly acknowledged that the very thing which made me despair—namely the senselessness of life—is the one indubitable thing man can know. ”

“ I now repeat this confession still more emphatically, since the more I read, the more I meditate, and the more I acquire, the more am I enabled to affirm that I know nothing. ”

“ It depends upon ourselves; our efforts take off the dust, the mirror does not change. There is neither knower, knowing, nor known. "He who knows that he does not know, knows It." He who has a theory knows nothing. ”

“ That was the strange thing, that one did not know where one was going, or what one wanted, and followed blindly, suffering so much in secret, always unprepared and amazed and knowing nothing; but one thing led to another and by degrees something had formed itself out of nothing, and so one reached at last this calm, this quiet, this certainty, and it was this process that people called living. ”

“ In speaking as above of events or things as to the details of which we know little or nothing, it is not of course implied that our ignorance about them is complete and universal, or, what comes to the same thing, that irregularity may be observed in all their qualities. ”

“ He did not know what he sought or what his journeys would bring him; but he had a feeling that he would learn something new about life and gain some clue to the mystery that he had solved only to find more mysterious. And even if he found nothing he would allay the unrest which gnawed at his heart. ”

“ They cannot jeer any longer at this too ardent heart. The sacrament of my body will dissolve in the interior of the earth; but, like a most piercing cry, my soul will repose in the bosom of Abraham. Now everything is dissolved, and with a dull and heavy eye I search about me in vain for the familiar land and the firm road under my feet,—and for that unkind face! The sky is nothing but fog, and Space is nothing but water! You see it! Everything is blurred; and all about me I must search in vain for line or form. For a horizon there is nothing but the cessation of color in darkness. ”

“ There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating,--people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. ”

“ Is all your knowledge to go so utterly for nothing unless other people know that you possess it?" ”

“ Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away. ”

“ And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
I had him sit next me at table, my firelock lean'd in the corner.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. ”

“ It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing. ”

“ I do not say that there is no life beyond the grave: I simply say I do not know!" What pleasure could any man find in taking from a human, heart a living faith and putting in the place of it the cold and cheerless doctrine "I do not know"? ”

“ Is it really knowing a thing, he asks, to class it with something else with which one is already familiar and so find it less strange?—this when both alike may be unknown, the things we are most familiar with being sometimes the least known, inasmuch as they excite no curiosity and we fancy we know them already. ”

“ But, alas, my head soon runs itself against the wall of mystery. Not only are there things it does not know, but there are things which it knows for a certainty that it will never be able to know. How can a man jump off his own shadow, or stand on his own shoulders, to look over the impassable wall? That all which is intelligible to us is real, I grant; but is all that is real intelligible to us? And then what becomes my knowledge save a melancholy feeling of ignorance that knows itself to be such? The same contradiction in my faculty for enjoyment. ”

“ We are aware—though we hardly dare to whisper our knowledge—that even our street at home will, at rare times, give us the sensational idea that we really do not know it. Can it exist in a dimension beyond our common experience? ”

“ He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing. ”

“ The known, that is to say, what we are accustomed to, so that we no longer marvel at it, the commonplace, any kind of rule to which we are habituated, all and everything in which we know ourselves to be at home:—what? is our need of knowing not just this need of the known? the will to discover in everything strange, unusual, or questionable, something which no longer disquiets us? ”

“ In some form, however, it winds itself into every action of our mental faculties, and no province of life appears untouched by this craving of the mind. Nevertheless to know is not the whole matter; for with knowledge comes appetition or aversion, admiration or contempt, love or abhorrence; and other impulses—emotional, desiderative, loving—impel the human creature to realize its nature in states of heightened consciousness that are not palpable modes of knowing, though they may be replete with all the knowledge that the man has gained. ”

“ The things I Don’t Know glow—each one separately—with a small precise lantern-brightness of its own.
Also in my wide background are things I don’t know and am unaware of it: the mass of my luminous Ignorance—it shines with an earthy phosphorescence.
When I look at the things I know I get an undetailed perspective of me like a bird’s-eye view of London.
When I look at neat formal rows of things I Don’t Know I have a clear look, as if through an uncurtained window into a bare little room, at my quietest self sitting knitting or plaiting straw. ”

“ You read of but one wise man, and all that he knew was, that he knew nothing. ”

“ There are only things not yet known,' and I thought, 'Yes, we're getting near our goal. We've conquered ignorance and superstition and illiteracy. And as time goes on we'll know more and more things. The area of the unknown will constantly diminish. Knowledge is like an expanding circle of light that eats into the darkness.' Then the darkness came. And you didn't know."
"We know what happened well enough," Rossiter corrected. ”

“ She had almost a mind to pull up the blinds again; it was such a very little matter, the bit of new carpet, after all.
"How do I know what they were thinking?" Never mind. People do know, or else how do they ever tell stories? We know lots of things that we don't tell all the time. We don't stop to think whether we know them or not; but they are underneath the things we feel, and the things we do. ”

“ You try to drop the notion, as if it were not fairly your own; you affect to slight it, as you would slight a boy who presumed on your acquaintance, but whom you have no desire to know. It is a common thing, you will find, with our world to decline familiarity with those ideas that fright us. ”

“ Ah! you do not even know how ignorant you are; and I shall open a new world to your mind, show you a thousand wonderful things that you have never understood, though you have a vague and dim idea of some of them. ”

“ It is odd, but the word nobody, and the term nothing, although no certain ideas can be affixed to them, are often made such use of in conversation. Philosophers have declared they knew nothing, and it is common for us to talk about doing nothing ”

“ Surely, that is mystery enough. You may say, if you like, that this feeling of mystery is because of our ignorance; nevertheless, it is there."
"Yes," she replied. "But the trouble is that, in so far as we have discovered mysteries, they turn out to be of the most prosy and commonplace nature. Things that were once unknown, and appealed to the world as romantic, now that they are known are just as prosy and uninteresting as the commonplace. Directly a thing is known it becomes humdrum. I went to a lecture one night given by a scientist—an astronomer, in fact. ”

“ Have you ever stopped to think that these multiplied impressions might create a current of thought—a mental atmosphere—an inscrutable power of suggestion?”
“Even when one is ignorant? When one does not know the story?” ”

“ And, now, instead of our being acquainted with every detail of each other's daily life, so that we are aware what we are feeling without speaking about it, there is a whole history of new experience to be narrated step by step, and we do not seem to know where to begin. ”

“ In other words, strip away all there is to know, get rid of all that interests you, the colour and the form and the glow of life, and then you will really know the thing. The only way to know a thing is elaborately to prevent yourself from knowing it. ”

“ So I mope by myself an hour—I take stock of my impressions. But there's one thing I don't believe you know. This is the very first time, in such a place and at such an hour, that it has ever befallen me to come across a friend stricken with the same perversity and engaged in the same pursuit. Most people, don't you see?"—I kept it up as I could—"don't in the least know what has happened to them, and don't care to know. That's one way, and I don't deny it may be practically the best. But if one does care to know, that's another way. ”

“ A single thing would sometimes seem to be and mean many things, with an uncertain identity at the heart of them, which kept constantly altering their look. I am indeed often driven to set down what I know to be but a clumsy and doubtful representation of the mere feeling aimed at, none of the communicating media of this world being fit to convey it, in its peculiar strangeness, with even an approach to clearness or certainty. ”

“ That is true; but there are degrees in our ignorance of the unknowable; and each of those degrees marks a triumph of the intelligence. To estimate more and more completely the extent of what it does not know is all that man’s knowledge can hope for. ”

“ Darkness and silence must fall perfectly on her, then she could know mystically, in unrevealed touch. She must lightly, mindlessly connect with him, have the knowledge which is death of knowledge, the reality of surety in not-knowing. ”

“ If it is night, then the sun withdraws its light.
Where knowledge is, can ignorance endure? If there be ignorance, then knowledge must die.
If there be lust, how can love be there? Where there is love, there is no lust. ”

“ If any one say we ought to receive nothing of which we have no experience; I answer, there is in me a necessity, a desire before which all my experience shrivels into a mockery. Its complement must lie beyond. ”

“ I don’t ask you, Alexa, whence comes this new-born desire of yours to know all about men; but I warn you that I am pretty good at guessing. However, let that pass. Not only will you never know all about men, but at present, my kiddie, [112] you don’t know anything at all. Knowledge of live things is not to be got from books or plays. All you can get from books or plays is—what shall I call it? there is no one word that will do—a sort of vague and deceptive hint of the reality. ”

“ And how is not this the most reprehensible ignorance, to think that one knows what one does not know? ”

“ At such times as these, coming from one knows not whence, and one feels too weak to search back to discover, there flit across the mind strange fragments, relevant, as they seem, to nothing whatever present. ”