What makes this observation bracing is its inversion of how we usually think about learning—not as accumulation, but as awakening to what we don't know. Most people assume education fills an empty vessel, yet Durant suggests the opposite: the more genuinely educated you become, the more acutely aware you are of vast territories you haven't explored. A surgeon who has spent twenty years studying the human body doesn't feel confident; she feels humbled by how much remains mysterious even within her specialty. That discomfort, that productive sense of standing at the edge of your own understanding, is where real intellectual maturity begins.