thinking that he knows, betrays him always to the injury of both
himself and others. An honest Ignorance is a golden vessel, empty,
ready to be filled with wealth but a pretentious or arrogant knowledge
is a vessel so filled with worthless trash that there is no room for
that which is of value.

The world is as full of things to know as it is full of hooks, No man
can hope to read all the books in the world. Selection is enforced by
necessity. So it is in Knowledge. One should not think that, because a
man is ignorant of some things, he is therefore a fool; his ignorance
may be the manifestation of a choice wiser than that of the one who
elects to sit in judgment upon him.

With the passion to know fully aroused; with his mind fretting to
grapple with the problem of Life; and his purpose fired to solve the
riddle of time; the man succeeded in acquiring this: that he must dare
to know little. He came to understand that, while all knowable things
are for all mankind to know, no man can know them all; and that the
wisest men to whom the world pays highest tribute, are the wisest
because they have not attempted to know all, but, recognizing the
value of Ignorance, have dared to remain ignorant of much.
Intellectual giants they are; intellectual babes they are, also. The
man had thought that there was nothing that these men--these wise
ones--did not know. He came to understand that even _he_ knew
some things of which they were ignorant. So his determination to know
all things passed to a determination to know nothing of many things
that he might know more of the things that were most closely
associated with his life and work. He determined to know the most of
the things that, to him, were most vital.