The Uncertainty of Knowledge
By A. C. Benson
I seized the opportunity some little while ago, on finding myself sitting next to a great physicist, of asking him a series of fumbling questions on the subject of modern theories of matter. For an hour I stumbled like a child, supported by a strong hand, in a dim and unfamiliar world, among the mysterious essences of things. I do not know that I acquired any precise knowledge, but I drank deep drafts of wonder and awe. The great man, with his amused and weary smile, was infinitely gentle, and left me, I will say, far more conscious of the beauty and holiness of knowledge. I said something to him about the sense of power that such knowledge must give. “Ah!” he said, “much of what I have told you is not proved, it is only suspected. We are very much in the dark about these things yet. Probably if a physicist of a hundred years hence could overhear me, he would be amazed to think that a sensible man could make such puerile statements. Power—no, it is not that! It rather makes one realize one’s feebleness in being so uncertain about things that are absolutely certain and precise in themselves, if we could but see the truth. It is much more like the apostle who said, ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.’ The thing one wonders at is the courage of the men who dare to think they know.”— A. C. Benson.