De docta ignorantia

By divine gift we discern that in all things there is a certain natural desire to exist in the better mode which the condition of each nature allows, and to work toward this end and to have suitable instruments, with which is inborn a judgment conformed to the purpose of knowing, lest the appetite be in vain and so that it may attain rest in the beloved weight of its own nature. But if perchance it happens otherwise, this must come about by accident, as when sickness seduces taste or opinion seduces reason. Wherefore we say that a sound free intellect knows the truth, which with insatiable inborn reasoning it desires to attain by surveying all things, once apprehended in a loving embrace, not doubting that that is most true to which no sound mind can dissent. All investigators, however, judge what is uncertain in proportionate comparison with a certain presupposed certitude. Every inquiry is therefore comparative, using proportion as its means, so that when the things inquired into can be compared with what is presupposed by a proximate proportional reduction, judgment of apprehension is easy, while when we need many means, difficulty and labor arise. As is well known in mathematics, where earlier propositions are more easily reduced to the first most-known principles and later ones with more difficulty, since only through the means of the earlier ones. Every inquiry, therefore, exists in comparative proportion, easy or difficult; hence the infinite as infinite, since it escapes all proportion, is unknown. Proportion, however, since it bespeaks agreement in some one thing together with otherness, cannot be understood without number. Number therefore includes all things proportionable. Nor is it only number in quantity that effects proportion, but in all things that can in any way agree substantially or accidentally and differ. Hence perhaps Pythagoras judged that all things are constituted and understood through the power of numbers. The precision of combinations in corporeal things, however, and the congruous fitting of the known to the unknown, surpass human reason, so that to Socrates it seemed that he knew nothing except that he was ignorant, wisest Solomon asserting that all things are difficult and inexpressible in speech. And another man of divine spirit says that wisdom is hidden and the place of understanding from the eyes of all the living. If therefore this is so, as even the profoundest Aristotle affirms in the first philosophy, that in the things most manifest by nature such difficulty befalls us as to one attempting like a night-owl to see the sun, then assuredly, since the appetite in us is not in vain, we desire to know that we are ignorant. If we can fully attain this, we shall attain learned ignorance. For nothing more perfect will come to a man even most studious in doctrine than to be found most learned in that very ignorance which is proper to him; and one will be the more learned the more one knows oneself to be ignorant. Toward this end I have taken up the labor of writing a few things on this learned ignorance itself.