---
title: 'Van Zandt on Total Depravity and the Challenge of Truly Knowing Yourself'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2023-01-14
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2023-van-zandt-on-total-depravity-and-the-challenge-of-truly-knowing-yourself
---

# Van Zandt on Total Depravity and the Challenge of Truly Knowing Yourself

“‘Know thyself!’ was the concise maxim of ancient wisdom, but like many others, it is a maxim more easily uttered than obeyed. The true knowledge of ourself is, indeed, the most difficult of all human attainments. A man may know something of himself, even as he may know something of external nature, and of his fellow-men. But in both cases, there is a limit beyond which he cannot go; there are hidden depths which he cannot penetrate. Especially in regard to his moral character, man is to himself an ‘unknowable individual.’ There are latent tendencies in his own heart, which may remain wholly unsuspected, until revealed, by an unlooked-for combination of circumstances, which shall call them into activity. It is on this account that men are so apt to misjudge themselves, and so prone to regard as harsh and unjust, the Scriptural account of human depravity.” — [A.B. Van Zandt](/authors/abraham-brooks-van-zandt), *The Unknown Depths of Depravity* (1855)