height of all intelligence. One by one, he saw his intellectual idols
fall in the dust of the commonplace. Little by little, he discovered
that the intellectual masters he had served were themselves only
servants. His intellectual Gods, he found to be men like himself. And
so, for a while, he said: "We can know nothing. We can only think that
we know. We can only pretend to know. There _is_ no real
Knowledge but only Ignorance. Ignorance should be exalted. In
Ignorance lies peace, contentment, happiness, and safety." Even of his
work--of his dreams he said this. He said: "It is no use." To the very
edge of this pit he came but he did not fall in.

To accept the fact of the unknowable without losing his faith in the
knowable: to recognize the unknown without losing in the least his
grip upon the known: to find the Knowledge of Yesterday becoming the
Ignorance of to-day and still hold fast to the Knowledge of the
present; to watch his intellectual leaders dropping to the rear and to
follow as bravely those who were still in the front: to see his
intellectual heroes fall and his intellectual idols crumbling in the
dust and still to keep burning the fire of his enthusiasm: to find
Knowledge so often a curse and Ignorance a blessing and still to
desire Knowledge: all this, the man learned that he must do if he
would work out his dreams. That which saved the man from the pit of
hopeless disbelief in everything and helped him to a clear
understanding of Ignorance, was this: he went back again into his
Yesterdays.

From sheltered fence corners and hidden woodland hollows, from the lee
of high banks, and along the hedge in the garden, the last worn and
ragged remnant of winter's garment was gone. The brook in the valley,
below the little girl's house, had broken the last of its fetters and