Chapter XC: Section I: Agreement of this Philosophy with the English Mind

An abyss of chance and an abyss of ignorance. The prospect is gloomy: no matter, if it be true. At all events, this theory of science is a theory of English science. Rarely, I grant you, has a thinker better summed up in his teaching the practice of his country; seldom has a man better represented, by his negations and his discoveries, the limits and scope of his race. The operations, of which he constructs science, are those in which the English excel all others, and those which he excludes from science are precisely those in which the English are deficient, more than any other nation. He has described the English mind, whilst he thought to describe the human mind. That is his glory, but it is also his weakness. There is in your idea of knowledge a flaw, of which the incessant repetition ends by creating the gulf of chance, from which, according to him, all things arise, and the gulf of ignorance, at whose brink, according to him, our knowledge ends. And see what comes of it. By cutting away from science the knowledge of first causes, that is, of divine things, you reduce men to become sceptical, positive, utilitarian, if they are cool-headed; or mystical, enthusiastic, methodistical, if they have lively imaginations. In this huge unknown void, which you place beyond our little world, passionate men and uneasy consciences find room for all their dreams; and men of cold judgment, despairing of arriving at any certain knowledge, have nothing left but to sink down to the search for practical means which may serve for the amelioration of our condition. It seems to me that these two dispositions are most frequently met with in an English mind. The religious and the positive spirit dwell there side by side, but separate. This produces an odd medley, and I confess that I prefer the way in which the Germans have reconciled science with faith.--But their philosophy is but badly written poetry.--Perhaps so.--But what they call reason, or intuition of principles, is only the faculty of building up hypotheses.--Perhaps so.--But the systems which they have constructed have not held their ground before experience.--I do not defend what they have done.--But their absolute, their subject, their object, and the rest, are but big words.--I do not defend their style.--What, then, do you defend?--Their idea of Causation.--You believe with them that causes are discovered by a revelation of the reason?--By no means.--You believe with us that our knowledge of causes is based on simple experience?--Still less.--You think, then, that there is a faculty, other than experience and reason, capable of discovering causes?--Yes.--You think there is an intermediate course between intuition and observation, capable of arriving at principles, as it is affirmed that the first is, capable of arriving at truths, as we find that the second is?--Yes.--What is it? Abstraction. Let us return to your original idea; I will endeavor to show in what I think it incomplete, and how you seem to me to mutilate the human mind. But my argument will be the formal one of an advocate, and requires to be stated at length.