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.

If I have called in the cuckoo to illustrate the ordinary man's
ignorance, it is not because I can speak with authority on that bird.
It is simply because, passing the spring in a parish that seemed to
have been invaded by all the cuckoos of Africa, I realised how
exceedingly little I, or anybody else I met, knew about them. But your
and my ignorance is not confined to cuckoos. It dabbles in all created
things, from the sun and moon down to the names of the flowers. I once
heard a clever lady asking whether the new moon always appears on the
same day of the week. She added that perhaps it is better not to know,
because, if one does not know when or in what part of the sky to
expect it, its appearance is always a pleasant surprise. I fancy,
however, the new moon always comes as a surprise even to those who are
familiar with her time-tables. And it is the same with the coming in
of spring and the waves of the flowers. We are not the less delighted
to find an early primrose because we are sufficiently learned in the
services of the year to look for it in March or April rather than in
October. We know, again, that the blossom precedes and not succeeds
the fruit of the apple-tree, but this does not lessen our amazement at
the beautiful holiday of a May orchard.

At the same time there is, perhaps, a special pleasure in re-learni