Ignominy

“ It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work ”

“ Is this fine quality of the mind destroyed by the development of the brain? As the domain wrested by science from ignorance increases—as island after island and continent after continent are discovered—as star after star and constellation after constellation in the intellectual world burst upon the midnight of ignorance, does the spirituality of the mind grow less and less? Like morality, is it only found in the company of ignorance and superstition? Is the spiritual man honest, kind, candid?—or dishonest, cruel and hypocritical? ”

“ This process of higher understanding improves mortal mind until error disappears, and nothing is left which deserves to perish or be punished.
Ignorance, like intentional wrong, is not Science. Ignorance must be seen and corrected before we can attain harmony. Inharmonious beliefs, which rob Mind, calling it matter, and deify their own notions, imprison Ignorance. ”

“ Ignorance personifies an Element. Knowledge sees a Being whose material expression is an Element. Ignorance sees the physical. Knowledge sees in everything physical a manifestation of the One Self, showing Himself in a limited form for the helping of His world. And so the higher Occultist may address Agni, the Ḍevarāja of Fire, and, below Agni, countless hosts of those who are called Fire Ḍevas, or Fire Elementals, all expressions of his nature, all using a special type of matter in the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In his Yesterdays, the ignorance of his little girl mate was an anchor that held the boy from drifting too far in the current of evil. In his Yesterdays, the goodness and wisdom of his father was not a will-o'-the-wisp but, to the boy, a steady guiding light. What mattered, then, if the knowledge of the old negro was but a foolish mirage? What mattered if the hired man did not know about fairies or if he did know so many things that were not so? So it was that the man came to know the value of Ignorance. So it was that the man did not fall into the pit of saying: "There is only Ignorance." ”

“ So that lying between the two extremes which bound the object of our ignorance—a subject on the one hand, and objects on the other—there is scope for an infinitude of unknown details. We are ignorant of the particular element which is in synthesis with the universal subject, we are ignorant of the special capacities of the universal subject, we are ignorant of the nature of the synthesis. In a word, all that can be definitely and demonstrably fixed as the object of all ignorance is, as has been said, that it is some subject, or ego, in union with some object, or non-ego. ”

“ Ignorance and credulity go hand in hand. Intelligence understands something of the law of average, has an idea of probability. It is not swayed by prejudice, neither is it driven to extremes by suspicion. It takes into consideration personal motives. It examines the character of the witnesses, makes allowance for the ignorance of the time,—for enthusiasm, for fear,—and comes to its conclusion without fear and without passion.
What knowledge has the Christian of another world? The senses of the Christian are the same as those of the Agnostic. ”

“ Ignorance is then the consummation of human philosophy, and its highest attainment is this discovery. ‘Our dream of knowledge is a little light rounded with darkness.’ ‘The highest reach of science and philosophy is the scientific recognition of human ignorance.’ ‘Doubt is the beginning and the end of all our efforts to know.’ ‘The last and highest consecration of all true religion is an altar to the unknown and unknowable God.’ Man’s knowledge of existence must be relative to his limited experience and intelligence. ”

“ And only on this solidified, granitelike foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will, the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but--as its refinement! It is to be hoped, indeed, that LANGUAGE, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awkwardness, and that it will continue to talk of opposites where there are only degrees and many refinements of gradation ”

“ In the case of the combination marked by the first, namely, the thing and its presence, the thing is the prominent part, and the presence generally escapes attention. In the case of the second, the thing and its absence, the absence is the important part, and the thing is feebly, if at all, attended to.
Ignorance is easily explained, in the same manner. Knowledge is the name of a certain well-known something, as present or existent. Ignorance is the name of the same well-known something, as absent or nonexistent.
Having a sensation, or an idea, is one state of consciousness ”

“ The objects now concretely acknowledged are related to the objects not now concretely known, in precisely the same general sense as is that in which, at any instant of our conscious life, the objects which our attention focusses are related to what, although present, is lost in the background of consciousness. Ignorance always means inattention to details. ”

“ The only method of abating this power of Ignorance, is by increasing that of Knowledge. As the sun goes up the sky, the darkness disappears; and the owl, the bat, and the beasts of prey, slink out of sight. Give the people knowledge,—give them better education,—and thus, crime will be abated,—drunkenness, improvidence, lawlessness, and all the powers of evil, will, to a certain extent, disappear. ”

“ Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance ”

“ 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. ”

“ I tell you, the ignoble intellect cannot think the truth, even within its own limits, and when it seriously tries! And of the ignoble intellect that does not seriously try, and has even reached the "ignobleness" of seriously trying the reverse, and of lying with its very tongue, what are we to expect? It is frightful to consider. ”

“ Ignorance of this kind exalts our opinion of the unseen and unknown artist’s skill, if he be unseen and unknown, but raises no doubts in our minds of the existence and agency of such an artist, at some former time, and in some place or other. Nor can I perceive that it varies at all, the inference, whether the question arise concerning a human agent, or concerning an agent of a different species, or an agent possessing, in some respects, a different nature. ”

“ Ignorance is its life and truth its death. So by error comes disease or death. But by the destruction of error comes the introduction of Truth or Science, or health; and as error is matter or mind, it is the instrument of its own destruction. ”

“ Ignorantia animæ.—I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, not of the arts and sciences, but of itself; yet relating to those it is a pernicious evil, the darkener of man’s life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth, with which a man goes groping in the dark, no otherwise than if he were blind. ”

“ Ignorance has no claim to a hearing even when she speaks ex cathedrâ.
Now what is meant by such an expression as the revelation of language rigorously understood? If, for instance, we take it materially, if we understand it to mean that a voice from heaven dictated to men the names of things—such a conception is so grossly [40] anthropomorphic, it is [24] so utterly at variance with all scientific explanation, it is so irreconcileably opposed to all our ideas of the laws of nature, that it needs no refutation for one who is in the least degree initiated into the methods of modern criticism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another antagonistic and opposite principle had to be found, adequate to resist the baneful agency of ignorance and stem its sad and misfortune-creating influence. That principle is science or knowledge. Ignorance is but a negative agent: it is only the absence of science. Let knowledge be, and ignorance shall vanish away in the same manner as darkness is noiselessly but irresistibly dissipated by the presence of light. ”

“ He praises Learned Ignorance—that is, Acknowledged Ignorance—as the source of knowledge. His ground for asserting the motions of the earth is, that there is no such thing as perfect rest, or an exact centre, or a perfect circle, nor perfect uniformity of motion. ”

“ These men who knew the value of Ignorance kept the spark of her faith in men alive. The faith, without which her dreams would be idle dreams, impossible of fulfillment, was kept for her by those men who knew the value of Ignorance. ”

“ It is not there that Wisdom sees, and compares, and pronounces; it is Ignorance, that, with dazzled eyes, just opening from the darkness of the night, perceives that she has been dreaming, without being able to distinguish, in the sunshine, [40] what objects really existing are around. ”

“ These are simply phrases, simply names of ignorance. Nobody knows what makes the river run, what makes the trees grow, why the flowers burst and bloom—nobody knows why the stars shine, and probably nobody ever will know.
There are two horizons that have never been passed by man—origin and destiny. All human knowledge is confined to the diameter of that circle. All religions rest on supposed facts beyond the circumference of the absolutely known. ”

“ Pondering on the origin of birth and death, the Enlightened One recognized that ignorance was the root of all evil; and these are the links in the development of life, called the twelve nidānas:7
In the beginning there is existence blind and without knowledge; and in this sea of ignorance there are stirrings formative and organizing. From stirrings, formative and organizing, rises awareness or feelings. Feelings beget organisms that live as individual beings. These organisms develop the six fields, that is, the five senses and the mind. ”

“ I cannot imagine how the strange notion arose that ignorance is the origin of superstitions. It is true indeed, if we mean ignorance in the same sense that Plato and Bacon were ignorant; the common ignorance of all men about the meaning of their monstrous destiny. But if this be intended, the phrase that ignorance is the origin of all superstitions is a coarse and misleading way of stating the case. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some sort of Ignorance therefore, or Non perception we cannot help; a Finite Mind, suppose it as large as you please, can never extend it self to Infinite Truths. But no doubt it is in our Power to remedy a great deal more than we do, and probably a larger Range is allowed us than the most Active and Enlightned Understanding has hitherto reach’d. ”

“ With regard to the understanding, we must be on our guard against two faults, which very commonly impair its action.
Ignorance is the first of these; it darkens the understanding, and obstructs the entrance of truth—its proper object. ”

“ Ignorance enchains and enslaves. Truth—which is but another way of saying a clear and definite knowledge of Law, the elemental laws of soul, of mind, and body, and of the universe about us—brings freedom. ”

“ Upon this supposition, knowledge produces the effect of ignorance: and we might just as reasonably imagine ignorance to produce the effects of knowledge.116 — Perhaps (suggests Theætêtus) , he may have non-cognitions in his mind, mingled with the cognitions: and in hunting for a cognition, he may catch a non-cognition. ”

“ Ignorance, the essence of which consists in believing in the distinction between subject and object, is also called defilement and the highest truth passes through various stages of defilement ending with that where under the influence of egoism and passion the external world of particulars is believed to be everything. ”

“ 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. ”