He had been merely drifting in fatuous and conceited blindness.

Now all at once his eyes were open; he knew what he had to do.

Ignorance was a thing to be remedied, and he would forthwith bend all his energies to cultivating his mind till it should blossom like a garden.

In this mood, Theron mentally measured himself against the more conspicuous of his colleagues in the Conference.

They also were ignorant, clownishly ignorant: the difference was that they were doomed by native incapacity to go on all their lives without ever finding it out.