The Pleasures of Ignorance | Page 2

suggesting that the cuckoo
does lay on the ground and not in a nest. And, if he is so far fortunate
as to discover this most secretive of birds in the very act of laying,
there still remain for him other fields to conquer in a multitude of such
disputed questions as whether the cuckoo's egg is always of the same
colour as the other eggs in the nest in which she abandons it. Assuredly
the men of science have no reason as yet to weep over their lost
ignorance. If they seem to know everything, it is only because you and
I know almost nothing. There will always be a fortune of ignorance
waiting for them under every fact they turn up. They will never know
what song the Sirens sang to Ulysses any more than Sir Thomas
Browne did.
If I have called in the cuckoo to illustrate the ordinary man's ignorance,
it is not because I can speak with authority on that bird. It is simply
because, passing the spring in a parish that seemed to have been
invaded by all the cuckoos of Africa, I realised how exceedingly little I,
or anybody else I met, knew about them. But your and my ignorance is
not confined to cuckoos. It dabbles in all created things, from the sun
and moon down to the names of the flowers. I once heard a clever lady
asking whether the new moon always appears on the same day of the
week. She added that perhaps it is better not to know, because, if one
does not know when or in what part of the sky to expect it, its
appearance is always a pleasant surprise. I fancy, however, the new
moon always comes as a surprise even to those who are familiar with
her time-tables. And it is the same with the coming in of spring and the
waves of the flowers. We are not the less delighted to find an early

primrose because we are sufficiently learned in the services of the year
to look for it in March or April rather than in October. We know, again,
that the blossom precedes and not succeeds the fruit of the apple-tree,
but this does not lessen our amazement at the beautiful holiday of a
May orchard.
At the same time there is, perhaps, a special pleasure in re-learning the
names of many of the flowers every spring. It is like re-reading a book
that one has almost forgotten. Montaigne tells us that he had so bad a
memory that he could always read an old book as though he had never
read it before. I have myself a capricious and leaking memory. I can
read Hamlet itself and The Pickwick Papers as though they were the
work of new authors and had come wet from the press, so much of
them fades between one reading and another. There are occasions on
which a memory of this kind is an affliction, especially if one has a
passion for accuracy. But this is only when life has an object beyond
entertainment. In respect of mere luxury, it may be doubted whether
there is not as much to be said for a bad memory as for a good one.
With a bad memory one can go on reading Plutarch and The Arabian
Nights all one's life. Little shreds and tags, it is probable, will stick even
in the worst memory, just as a succession of sheep cannot leap through
a gap in a hedge without leaving a few wisps of wool on the thorns. But
the sheep themselves escape, and the great authors leap in the same
way out of an idle memory and leave little enough behind.
And, if we can forget books, it is as easy to forget the months and what
they showed us, when once they are gone. Just for the moment I tell
myself that I know May like the multiplication table and could pass an
examination on its flowers, their appearance and their order. To-day I
can affirm confidently that the buttercup has five petals. (Or is it six? I
knew for certain last week.) But next year I shall probably have
forgotten my arithmetic, and may have to learn once more not to
confuse the buttercup with the celandine. Once more I shall see the
world as a garden through the eyes of a stranger, my breath taken away
with surprise by the painted fields. I shall find myself wondering
whether it is science or ignorance which affirms that the swift (that
black exaggeration of the swallow and yet a kinsman of the

humming-bird) never settles even on a nest, but disappears at night into
the heights of the air. I shall learn with fresh astonishment that it is