The paradox here isn't merely that learning reveals ignorance—it's that *accumulation itself* breeds humility. Voltaire suggests that each book doesn't simply add to your knowledge; it multiplies the perimeter of what you don't know, like expanding a circle that grows its edge faster than its center. A doctor with thirty years of practice and thousands of cases behind her will hesitate more confidently than a second-year resident, not because she's learned less, but because she's mapped the territory well enough to see how vast it remains. What saves this from being paralyzing is that Voltaire spent his life writing anyway—certainty, he shows us, is the luxury of the ignorant.