to its extreme consequences, declaring those problems for which, from its one-sided, restricted point of view, it could find no adequate solution to be insoluble, and was thus led by faulty perspective to attribute to the nature of human knowledge that inadequacy which was due rather to its own method and system.
2. The Ignorabimus of Du Bois-Reymond. — Du Bois-Reymond[1] lays down the dogma that the one and only true exact science is mechanics; all points of view based on teleological, aesthetic, and qualitative principles are but anthropomorphic conceptions, from which we must free ourselves that we may consider nothing in the world but the quantitative aspects of the movement of material masses. What, then, is the essence and source of matter, force, motion, and of their distribution? A mystery which baffles human knowledge! How does the qualitative complexity of sensation and consciousness issue from this world of purely homogeneous magnitudes? Yet another mystery! How about the source of life, the finality of organisms, the highest functions of the mind and free will? These too are inscrutable enigmas, otherwise we might well ask ourselves: Are these bounds really the Pillars of Hercules of human knowledge? Do they not rather mark the limits of your partial and fragmentary conception? Du Bois-Reymond, taking as his starting-point the old prejudice that knowledge is but the power of formulating mechanically, unhesitatingly chooses the first alternative, and cries, “Ignorabimus!” But the mind of man with its higher ideals refused to submit to this “Ignorabimus,” and, since science had declared herself unable to satisfy its loftiest moral aspirations and attributed her failure to the congenital defects of our reason, what more natural than that it should seek to meet the requirements of life in some other way? Scientific intellectualism with its sceptical conclusions prepared the soil for the various forms of reaction; indeed it went farther, and sowed the seed, leaving, as did Spencer, the revelation of the Absolute
- ↑ Reden, two volumes (Leipzig, 1886-87), containing the two famous addresses: “Über die Grenzen des Naturkennens” (1873) and “Die sieben Welträtsel” (1880).
