Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/172

 repeat here, because, as the Spanish proverb says, "No huy peor sordo que quien no quiere oir" (None so deaf as those who will not hear) : namely, that if Reason were a faculty specially designed for Metaphysics, a faculty which supplied the material of knowledge and could reveal that which transcends all possible experience, the same harmony would necessarily reign between men on metaphysical and religious subjects—for they are identical—as on mathematical ones, and those who differed in opinion from the rest would simply be looked upon as not quite right in their mind. Now exactly the contrary takes place, for on no subject are men so completely at variance with one another as upon these. Ever since men first began to think, philosophical systems have opposed and combated each other everywhere; they are, in fact, often diametrically contrary to one another. Ever since men first began to believe (which is still longer), religions have fought against one another with fire and sword, with excommunication and cannons. But in times when faith was most ardent, it was not the lunatic asylum, but the Inquisition, with all its paraphernalia, which awaited individual heretics. Here again, therefore, experience flatly and categorically contradicts the false assertion, that Reason is a faculty for direct metaphysical knowledge, or, to speak more clearly, of inspiration from above. Surely it is high time that severe judgment should be passed upon this Reason, since, horribile dictu, so lame, so palpable a falsehood continues after half a century to be hawked about all over Germany, wandering year by year from the professors chair to the students bench, and from bench to chair, and has actually found a few simpletons, even in France, willing to believe in it, and carry it about in that country also. Here, however, French bon-sens will very soon send la raison transcendentale about its business.