Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/270

 still it would not be unthinkable, and this is sufficiant for us to declare that our knowledge of the hidden parts is only practically, not absolutely impossible. This would remain true if there were a law of nature which would forever prevent a journey from our planet to its satellite; for the laws of nature might be different, and we can imagine them changed in such a way that we could say what would have to be done and what our physical and mental faculties would have to be if we wanted to enjoy the sight of the moon's averted surface.

It must be admitted: the majority of questions one might ask about the world, can actually, not be answered, our knowledge is limited. But although it may even be definitely limited: if the limitations are of the sort I have just been describing, they are not "absolute" — they may be actually unsurmountable, but they do not worry the philosopher: when he pronounces his ignorabimus he means to assert an absolute impossibility of knowing, he means to say that there are certain domains of knowledge which are in principle unaccessible to human understanding.

The view I have been advocating is strictly opposed to all philosophies which believe in an essential limitation of knowledge, in a realm of Being which is unknowable in principle. There are a great many things concealed from us, but none that might not be revealed. Whatever we do not actually know may at least be known in principle ; there is no absolute ignorabimus although there are innumerable cases of ignoramus, the skope of possible knowledge has no boundary, no question is necessarily unanswerable for the human mind.

No elaborate reasoning is required to prove this statement; like everything else I have been saying it is a simple consequence of the definition of knowledge; in other words, it is tautological, in still other words the assertion that there are unsurmountable borders which necessarily restrict all human knowledge is not false, it is a nonsensical contradiction. We can easily convince ourselves of this, by viewing once more the whole situation from which the agnostic doctrine of eternally hidden truths has sprung.

If we ask the agnostic why he believes in the existence of a reality which can never be known and is, in so far "Transcendent", he will answer that he infers it from his experience. He says that in order to understand the world of experience (either on account of a priori elements it seems to con-