L'Innocence, a painting by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau that uses a young child and a lamb as symbols of
innocence. Although the term encompasses a number of meanings, the one depicted here is a state of unknowing, where one's
experience is lesser, in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale. In contrast to
ignorance, it is generally viewed as a positive term, connoting an optimistic view of the world, in particular one where the lack of knowledge stems from a lack of wrongdoing, whereas greater knowledge comes from doing wrong.