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A Little Learning

April 4, 1948

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It has often been observed that a little learning is a dangerous thing. But if a little learning is dangerous, surely a little ignorance is dangerous also. And then think how great must be the danger of a lot of ignorance? If we want some idea of how little we know of what there is to know, to begin with we need only look into a large library and see the almost endless shelves of books that no man in this life will ever have time to read. We sometimes marvel that all the men who ever lived ever found time or reason to write them. In the Library of Congress there are over nine million books and pamphlets. Add to these all the other written works in all the other libraries of the world; add to these all the written works that have been lost or destroyed in all ages past and we begin to have some inkling of an idea how little we know of what all men have known, or have thought they have known. But this isn’t all: Add to this all there is to learn that isn’t to be found in books; add to this a list of all the questions that no man can answer, all the things that no man can do, and we may begin to have some small idea of our inadequacy. “Man,” remarked Montaigne, “is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.”4 We marvel at the mind of man. But how much more should be marvel at the Mind that made man, and that made so many things beyond man’s comprehension. We are but the merest children scratching at the surface of truths so profound, so illimitable, so beyond our present understanding that conceit of learning ill becomes anyone. We may know some of the answers; we may think we know many more; but there is still so much that no man knows, so much that all of us together do not know, so much for which we must venture forth in faith. “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

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