Knowledge and wisdom

[Sujith]

Hi,

I thought I’ll share this.

Everything is being unriddled and explained. If we compare our knowledge with that of the ancients, we appear very wise. But we are no nearer to solving the riddle of eternal justice than Cain was. Progress, civilisation, all the conquests of the human mind have brought us nothing new here. Like our ancestors, we stand still with fright and perplexity before ugliness, disease, misery, senility, death. All that the wise men have been able to do so far is to turn the earthly horrors into problems. We are told that perhaps all that is horrible only appears horrible, that perhaps at the end of the long journey something new awaits us. Perhaps! But the modern educated man, with the wisdom of all the centuries of mankind at his command, knows no more about it than the old singer who solved universal problems at his own risk. We, the children of a moribund civilisation, we, old men from our birth, in this respect are as young as the first man.

-Lev Shestov