Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/407

 to answer, but not a single real question for which it would be logically-impossible to find a solution. Since only the latter kind of impossibility would have that hopeless and fatal character which is implied by the ignorabimus and which could cause philosophers to speak of a "Riddle of the Universe" and to despair of such problems as the "cognition of things in themselves", and similar ones, it would seem that the acceptance of my opinion would bring the greatest relief to all those who have been unduly concerned about the essential incompetence of human knowledge in regard to the greatest issues. Nobody can reasonably complain about the empirical impossibility of knowing everything, for that would be equivalent to complaining that we cannot live at all times and be in all places simultaneously.

Nobody wants to know all the facts, and it is not important to know them : the really essential principles of the universe reveal themselves at any time and any place. I do not suggest, of course, that they lie open at first glance, but they can always be discovered by the careful and penetrating methods of science.

How can I prove my point ? What assures us that the impossibility of answering questions never belongs to the question as such, is never a matter of principle, but is always due to accidental empirical circumstances, which may some day change ? There is no room here for a real proof; [1] but I can indicate in general how the result is obtained.

It is done by an analysis of the meaning of our questions. Evidently philosophical issues — and very often other problems too — are difficult to understand: we have to ask for an explanation of what is meant by them. How is such an explanation given ? How do we indicate the meaning of a question?

A conscientious examination shows that all the various ways of explaining what is actually meant by a question are, ultimately, nothing but various descriptions of Ways in which the answer to the question must be found. Every explanation or indication of the meaning of a question consists, in some way or other, of prescriptions for finding its answer. This principle has [1] For a more complete account of the matter I may refer the English reader to two lectures which appeared in the Publications in Philosophy, edited by the College of the Pacific in 1932, and more especially to an article on "Meaning and Verification" in a forthcoming issue of the American Philosophical Review.