many of our æsthetic, to many of our practical purposes and ends.
When the man of affairs, the artist, or the man of science fails, he is not rebutted. He tries again. He says the impressions of sense must give way, must be reduced to the desiderated form.[1] They all postulate in the interests of their volitional nature a harmony between the latter and the nature of things. The theologian does no more. And the reflex doctrine of the mind's structure, though all theology should as yet have failed of its endeavor, could but confess that the endeavor itself at least obeyed in form the mind's most necessary law.[2]
Now for the question I asked above: What kind of a being would God be if he did exist? The word 'God' has come to mean many things in the history
- ↑ "No amount of failure in the attempt to subject the world of
sensible experience to a thorough-going system of conceptions, and
to bring all happenings back to cases of immutably valid law, is
able to shake our faith in the rightness of our principles. We hold
fast to our demand that even the greatest apparent confusion must
sooner or later solve itself in transparent formulas. We begin the
work ever afresh; and, refusing to believe that nature will permanently withhold the reward of our exertions, think rather that we have hitherto only failed to push them in the right direction. And all this pertinacity flows from a conviction that we have no right to renounce the fulfilment of our task. What, in short sustains the courage of investigators is the force of obligation of an ethical idea." (Sigwart : Logik, bd. ii., p. 23.)
This is a true account of the spirit of science. Does it essentially differ from the spirit of religion? And is any one entitled to say in advance, that, while the one form of faith shall be crowned with success, the other is certainly doomed to fail?
- ↑ Concerning the transformation of the given order into the order of conception, see S. H. Hodgson, The Philosophy of Reflection, chap. v.; H. Lotze, Logik, sects. 342-351; C. Sigwart, Logik, sects. 60-63, 105.
