What if we Knew Nothing and Saw the World?

“Thomas Carlyle, following Plato, pictures a man, a deep pagan thinker, who had grown to maturity in some hidden cave and is brought out suddenly to see the sun rise. ‘What would his wonder be,’ exclaims Carlyle, ‘his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free, open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight… This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many sounding-seas; that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Ay, what? At the bottom we do not know; we can never know at all.’”