conceivably this was because it hurt his pride to imagine that there should be others who were in possession of information that might have greatly affected his understanding of the world , but who withheld it until he made an active attempt to seek it out ; of course , this was not some conscious decision that they had made , but it bothered him still ; what troubled him more was the endless possibilities , or perhaps even lack of possibility with respect to what could be done with such information once acquired : it was frightening to think that there would be an endless array of actions or contemplations ( or , worse yet , no conceivable array thereof ) to be yielded from it , it was similarly worrisome to consider the possibility that the information would be misunderstood or not understood at all and that he might have lacked the intelligence to comprehend it in the first place .