Author: Robert LyndPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Essays (Irish)
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
The Pleasures of Ignorance
Author: Robert LyndPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Essays (Irish)
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
The Pleasures of Ignorance
Author: Robert LyndPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 100
Book Description
It is impossible to take a walk in the country with an average townsman-especially, perhaps, in April or May-without being amazed at the vast continent of his ignorance. It is impossible to take a walk in the country oneself without being amazed at the vast continent of one's own ignorance. Thousands of men and women live and die without knowing the difference between a beech and an elm, between the song of a thrush and the song of a blackbird. Probably in a modern city the man who can distinguish between a thrush's and a blackbird's song is the exception. It is not that we have not seen the birds. It is simply that we have not noticed them. We have been surrounded by birds all our lives, yet so feeble is our observation that many of us could not tell whether or not the chaffinch sings, or the colour of the cuckoo. We argue like small boys as to whether the cuckoo always sings as he flies or sometimes in the branches of a tree-whether Chapman drew on his fancy or his knowledge of nature in the lines
The Pleasure of Ignorance
Author: Robert LyndPublisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781548374327
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
This ignorance, however, is not altogether miserable. Out of it we get the constant pleasure of discovery. Every fact of nature comes to us each spring, if only we are sufficiently ignorant, with the dew still on it. If we have lived half a lifetime without having ever even seen a cuckoo, and know it only as a wandering voice, we are all the more delighted at the spectacle of its runaway flight as it hurries from wood to wood conscious of its crimes, and at the way in which it halts hawk-like in the wind, its long tail quivering, before it dares descend on a hill-side of fir-trees where avenging presences may lurk. It would be absurd to pretend that the naturalist does not also find pleasure in observing the life of the birds, but his is a steady pleasure, almost a sober and plodding occupation, compared to the morning enthusiasm of the man who sees a cuckoo for the first time, and, behold, the world is made new. And, as to that, the happiness even of the naturalist depends in some measure upon his ignorance, which still leaves him new worlds of this kind to conquer. He may have reached the very Z of knowledge in the books, but he still feels half ignorant until he has confirmed each bright particular with his eyes. He wishes with his own eyes to see the female cuckoo-rare spectacle!-as she lays her egg on the ground and takes it in her bill to the nest in which it is destined to breed infanticide. He would sit day after day with a field-glass against his eyes in order personally to endorse or refute the evidence 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.
The Pleasures of Ignorance
Author: Robert LyndPublisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 130
Book Description
"A man who does not defend the honor of his cat cannot be trusted to defend anything." - says Robert Lynd in the essay "Cats." Find more exciting and funny truths about our lives in this wonderful collection of essays.
The Pleasures of Ignorance
Author: Robert LyndPublisher: IndyPublish.com
ISBN: 9781414249308
Category : Essays
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
The Pleasures of Ignorance
Author: Robert LyndPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : English essays
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
The pleasures of ignorance, by R.Lynd (Y.Y.).
Author: Robert LyndThe Pleasure Of Ignorance
Author: Robert LyndPublisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781016445931
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
The Pleasures of Ignorance. (Second Edition.).
Author: Robert LyndThe Pleasures of Reason in Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic Hedonists
Author: James WarrenPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107025443
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Book Description
How did ancient philosophers understand the relationship between human capacities for thinking and our experiences of pleasure and pain?