40 HUMANISM 



useless to them, it is for them, literally and in the 

 completest way, false ! 



1 But surely both they and you must admit that there 

 is much useless knowledge ? 



There is much, of course, which is so called, and 

 actually is useless for certain purposes, but nothing which 

 can be so for all. Much that is &quot; useless &quot; is so because 

 certain persons refuse to use it or are unable to do so. 

 Pearls are useless to swine, and, as Herakleitos said, gold 

 to asses. And so neither ass nor hog could truly call 

 them precious. Or, again, often what is called useless is 

 that which is indirectly useful. It is useful as logically 

 completing- a system of knowledge which is useful in other 

 parts and as a whole. Or perhaps in some cases the use 

 is prospective and has not yet been discovered. A great 

 deal of mathematics would be in this position. But if 

 no use could be found for mathematics, they would sink 

 into the position of difficult games, and then their only 

 use would be to amuse those who liked to play with 

 them. Or lastly, there is a good deal of knowledge which 

 is comparatively, or as Aristotle would say, accidentally, 

 useless, because the time spent in acquiring it might be 

 more usefully employed otherwise. For instance, you 

 might count the hairs on Aristotle s head, and the 

 knowledge might enable you to win a bet that their 

 number was less than a myriad. But ordinarily such 

 knowledge would be deemed useless, seeing that you 

 might have been better employed. 



But would these explanations cover all the facts ? 



Not perhaps quite all in our world, in which there is 

 also seeming &quot; useless knowledge,&quot; which is not really 

 knowledge at all, but falsely so called ; being as it were 

 a parasitic growth upon the real and useful knowledge, 

 or even a perversion thereof, a sort of harmless tumour 

 or malignant cancer, which would not arise in a healthy 

 state and should be extirpated wherever it appears. 



Still it exists. 



As evil exists ; indeed it seems to be merely one 

 aspect of the evil that exists. 



