So much for progress in curing ignorance: Nearly two hundred years ago Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote of our ignorance-induced arrogance, as common today as then:
Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him. For several ages he saw in the countless worlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean only the petty candles, the household torches, that Providence had been pleased to light for no other purpose but to make the night more agreeable to man. Astronomy has corrected this delusion of human vanity; and man now reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds larger and more glorious than his own,—that the earth on which he crawls is a scarce visible speck on the vast chart of creation.
(Quoted from page 213 of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Bernh. Tauchnitz Jun., 1842.)
For a brief biography of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, click here. For images of or relating to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, click here.
Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him. For several ages he saw in the countless worlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean only the petty candles, the household torches, that Providence had been pleased to light for no other purpose but to make the night more agreeable to man. Astronomy has corrected this delusion of human vanity; and man now reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds larger and more glorious than his own,—that the earth on which he crawls is a scarce visible speck on the vast chart of creation.
(Quoted from page 213 of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Bernh. Tauchnitz Jun., 1842.)
For a brief biography of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, click here. For images of or relating to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, click here.
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