The unavoidable superficial

The following reflection on the unknowable vastness of human knowledge was written 75 years ago:

SpenglerEduard Meyer

So wrote Will Durant, looking back at the 1920s.

When we think of the unknowable—the almost unfathomable—depths of what human individuals in the aggregate know; and then think of what is beyond that, the infinity of things to be known that no person knows; when we think of how much there is to know that we do not and cannot know, what choice do we have when we speak but to either be superficial or be silent? We can be more informed or less informed, and more informed is better, but we can rarely be fully informed, and yet we speak.

(I believe that part of what I write above is just warmed-over Wittgenstein; but, appropriately enough for this post, my knowledge of his Tractatus is too superficial for me to say that with confidence.)