The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live in a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.--H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.--H.P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"
There is no contradiction here. Knowledge is the necessary precursor to fear of the unknown. Correlating all the world's contents awakens the mind to the horror of an absolute unknown, because it leaves the totality itself unaccounted for, an arbitrary emanation from the nameless abyss attesting to a demonic will.
