Knowing What You Don’t Know

“The half-informed man is not the man who knows only the half of things, but the man who only half knows things” is one wonderful line from A. D. Sertillanges’ The Intellectual Life. The great Dominican theologian is discussing the limitations the intellectual worker must accept if he is to do the work he’s given to do.

It came to mind as I’m helping teach a class for the doctor of ministry students at Trinity School for Ministry and find as always happens that many of the pastors want to study everything related to their subject and have to be repeatedly encouraged to take up only what they need to. (Which, let me stress, I don’t mean as a criticism.)

Here’s the whole passage, which appears on pages 121 and 122 of the CUA Press edition:

[W]e are obliged at a given moment to accept necessary sacrifices. It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make their demands; willy-nilly we must submit and rest content as to the things that time and wisdom deny us, with a glance of sympathy which is another act of homage to the truth.

Do not be ashamed not to know what you could only know at the cost of scattering your attention. Be humble about it, yes, for it shows our limitations; but to accept our limitations is a part of virtue and gives us a great dignity, that of the man who lives according to his law and plays his part. We are not much, but we are part of a whole and we have the honor of being a part. What we do not do, we do all the same; God does it, our brethren do it, and we are with them in the unity of love. . . .

The half-informed man is not the man who knows only the half of things, but the man who only half knows things. Know what you have resolved to know; cast a glance at the rest. Leave to God, who will look after it, what does not belong to your proper vocation. Do not be a deserter from yourself, through wanting to substitute yourself for all others.