A wise system of education will at last teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

John Lubbock (1834–1913), later Lord Avebury, was a Victorian polymath—banker, Liberal politician, archaeologist, and popularizer of science—who wrote frequently on education, reading, and the social value of scientific knowledge. The sentiment fits the late-19th-century British context in which expanding public education and the prestige of modern science prompted debates about what schooling should cultivate: rote attainment or intellectual humility and lifelong inquiry. Lubbock’s public-facing essays and lectures often urged self-improvement through reading and a scientific cast of mind, stressing that genuine learning reveals the vastness of what remains unknown.

The line argues that the highest achievement of education is not the accumulation of facts but the awakening of epistemic humility. A “wise system” leads students to recognize the limits of current knowledge—both personal and collective—and therefore to remain curious, teachable, and open to revision. Implicitly, Lubbock aligns education with the scientific attitude: progress depends on acknowledging ignorance, asking better questions, and resisting complacency. The quote also critiques educational vanity—credentials or memorization can create the illusion of mastery—by proposing that true learning enlarges one’s sense of the unknown and thus sustains lifelong study.