St. Landry democrat., 1888-07-07
WHAT WE DON'T KNOW.
Two or Three Things OF Which Mankind In
Still Ignorant,

! WHAT WE DON'T KNOW.
Two or Three Things OF Which Mankind
Still Ignorant.
In certain moments of seH-congratyx
lat1on we are in the habit of fearine
lest we are too rapidly approaching
neutrality-suspicious. of knowledge
especially-and to entertain the doubt
whether it is not dangerous to be SO
immensely clever as we are. We have
improved SO wonderfully, we say; we
have obtained such transcendent vic
tories in science and philosophy; we
are SO immensely superior to our pre-
decessors: we have solved so manv
mysteries and chained so MANY forces
that we begin to draw ourselves up
and to calculate that the "httle'' diff
| ference between ourselves and the an
| gels has been pretty successfully
bridged over. We may come down from
our pedestal for a little while-there
are still two or three things that we do
not know. We do not know, for in
stance, how many of our kind there
are on this globe. 1t is, after all, but
a very small portion of the world that
we know any thing about, and the
beaten path is but as a trail on a mount
ain. The interior of Newfoundland
is a terra incognito; Manitoba is com
paratively untrodden waste; there are
islands in the Pacific of which we
know nothing more than that they ex-
ist; China and Thibet are largely
closed volumes, and about many other
portions of this world there is as much
guess-work as there was in the days of
Marco Polo. We can not tell why of
two exactly similar bulbs put into. pre-
cisely similar soil one should bloom
out as a tulip and the other come up as
an onion. We do not know how the
flowers receive their color or perfume,
nor why it is that while we can catch
the shadow in camera we can not
also imprison the color. There are
many things, too, for which we have
not been able to frame laws. We can
not agree as to the cause of earth
quakes, the origin of volcanic fires, or
the birth-throes of the whirlwind. We
do not even know our own origin, and
the thinking world is divided between
evolution and creation. We do not
know even the normal color of man,
whether we are bleached from the
dark original, Or whether the dark
races are sun-burnt editions of the
early whites. Was the flood local or
universal? Did Atlantis exist? Were
there giants in those days? These are
few OF the many questions that might
be asked and remain unanswered. |
But not only is there the impene-
trable mist of blackness about the pre-
historic past-we can not even settle |
the questions of more recent times.
We do not know how this great conti-
nent OF ours was peopled, and we hop
from the idea of the wandering Aleuta
ferrying across Behring Sea to that OF
the lost Japanese fishermen drifting to
the Mexican coast without gaining sat-
lsfactien from either. We pirate of a
civilization that antedated ours, and
cropping backward we come to the Toll
tees streaming from the northward
into Mexico, and behind them--nothing.
Like the Gypsies, they are evolved
rom one knows not what. Our sur
yeons have become digitally expert,
put they can not cure cancer nor repair
destroyed tissue. Consumption battles
,he cleverest medicos and pyamia is
till fatal. The panacea has not been
discovered, the well of eternal youth
s still unvisited. Sanitaria are mat
ers OF fashion and not OF fact; expert
nents are still conducted and grave
ards are still filed that would not be
+ the learned attendance .'had only
,nown." Our greatest ignorance of
III, though, is concerning the mystery
# our being. We know no more of
'ur beginning and end, of what pre-
eded the one and will round off the
ther, than King Alfred did. sour
ife, I" said he to his mobiles one evening,
$ they were sitting beside the great
REPLACE, ''is something that is bound
d by impenetrable obscurity. A little
ird flies from the darkness of the
utside night into the brightness of
his room, lutters minute or two in Q
be warmth and light, and then flies ;
through the opposite window into the g
light once more. A thousand years
ave gone by since Alfred delivered
imself of this fable, but the centuries ,
ave brought us no new wisdom. San 4
'rancisco Chronicle.
h
Plantation Philosophy.